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Great blog post by Loic Le Meur, Founder of Seesmic, explaining how he formed the company and raised his intial investment. what’s that old adage? - Oh yes - ‘ its not what you know, it is who you know’.

I closed the initial funding of Seesmic in September 2007. The main investment came from Atomico’s Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis (they invested $5.5 million on the $6 million). Talking to bloggers all the time, I have not been very good at keeping the secret as Om Malik was the first to talk about it on October 8, 2007. On November 28, Liz Gannes got almost the entire list of investors right. We have never really hidden the funding as a partial investor list was even on our company backgrounder at the last Demo conference (by the way see our DEMO video if you want to learn about Seesmic in 6 minutes). So the only real news today is the full list of investors.

We should have made it “officially” public for a while but I did not want to do it until all the paperwork was done and signed. That happened last week. Getting 14 investors on board – most of whom are individuals and not through funds - takes time.

Niklas Zennstrom and I have been friends for years and we have been wanting to launch a project together for a while. We both know that the media that has not really changed since the growth of the Internet is TV. Most of our friends do not watch TV anymore or watch it only with a laptop on their knees. TV will totally change in the future, we all know that. While Niklas and Janus are focusing on the high end video content with Joost, I have always been fascinated by the conversations.

I explained to Niklas that for me, the quality of conversations that I have enjoyed on blogs and social software since 2003 had to happen in video and that simply isn’t happening yet. I said I wanted to make this happen and make it my next company and Niklas immediately [Read more]

Tags: AOL, Goldman Sachs, Google, IPRO, Joost, LinkedIn, Pulver, Seesmic, Skype, SofTech VC, SupportSoft, TechCrunch, Topica

Jobvite, the provider of next generation on-demand recruitment solutions, has completed a $7.2 million Series A financing led by CMEA Ventures. Jim Watson, Managing Director, and Saad Khan, Partner, of CMEA join the company’s Board of Directors.

The company will use the investment to expand product development, marketing and sales efforts.

Jobvite provides an on-demand recruitment application that manages the entire recruiting and hiring process. Built on Web 2.0 technologies, Jobvite is radically easy to use for everyone involved in recruiting. The site combines Social networking, collaboration and Outlook integration to improve hiring productivity and assist in the coordination of hiring across departments.

Jobvite customers include TiVo, Infinera, SupportSoft, Mattson Technology and Tellme Networks.

“To win the war for talent, companies need to engage all of their employees in recruiting,” said Jesper Schultz, Chief Executive Officer of Jobvite. “Our next generation solution instantly allows all employees to be involved. Our customers use Jobvite as a strategic advantage to hire the best people.”

“While the enterprise software market continues to experience consolidation, the Software as a Service market is experiencing explosive growth. Jobvite’s solution for recruiting and hiring offers a dynamic way to find the most important yet scarce resource of top talent. It will completely change the way companies go about recruiting and hiring,” said Jim Watson, Managing Director at CMEA.

“We’re very pleased to be working with CMEA as we continue to innovate in the recruitment space,” Jesper Schultz continues. “As a partner, CMEA brings deep operating experience that will support our market expansion.”

www.jobvite.com

Tags: CMEA Ventures, Infinera, Jobvite, Mattson Technology, SupportSoft, Tellme Networks, TiVo