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Rewards network Kiip announced today that it closed $11 million in a second round of investment. The funding will go towards expanding Kiip’s rewards system beyond gaming, infusing ‘moments of happiness’ into everyday life.

Kiip works with game developers, brands, and users to reward gaming achievements with tangible products. Rather than earning points with no real world value, players unlock Kiip rewards which could be anything from a can of Pepsi to a Best Buy gift card. This model enables developers to ramp up engagement and excitement within their game, puts brands in direct contact with a large market of consumers, and makes players happy because their achievements are rewarded with actual prizes.

Founder and CEO Brian Wong is most notorious for his youth. He was just 19 when Kiip raised $300k in preliminary funding, making him the youngest person ever to receive venture capital funding. Wong graduated from college at 18 years old with a degree in business. He moved to San Francisco to work at Digg, but was laid off five months later. Instead of moping, he started a company.

“During my hiatus, I was traveling quite a bit on long haul flights,” he said. “I did an ‘aisle creep’ and noticed that no-one was being productive on their phones, they were playing games. All games have achievements, and what if in these powerful moments, you give people an extra hit of dopamine by rewarding them with something real?”

Wong, pictured below, spoke at our GamesBeat 2012 conference in a fireside chat on game rewards.

In April of 2011, Kiip raised $4 million led by venture capital firm True Ventures and continued to grow. What began with 10 games and 10 brands now involves 400 apps integrated into the system, 40 million monthly unique users in the US, and about 100 million “moments of happiness” every month.

Kiip is also evolving as a product.  Initially, Kiip scouted out independent developers and asked if they wanted its code. The company switched to a self-service model earlier this year and opened up the network to anyone. $100k went into a developer fund to fuel this effort, and significant momentum began to build.

After meeting such success within the gaming world, Wong saw the opportunity too expand into other markets.

“We realized achievements don’t only exist in games, they exist everywhere. You can reward anything you do inside of your phone, it is part of everyday life. Rewards for everyday life- that statement has become a lot more real.”

The influx of capital will go towards fueling this wider perspective. Kiip will begin rewarding experiences, which will please brands and users alike. As an experiment, Kiip forged a relationship with fitness app Map My Run and Pepsi’s Propel water. Runners track their miles using the app and can unlock rewards for their efforts.

There are no set benchmarks for unlocking rewards, so users do not know when one is coming. One runner could get a prize after 5 miles, and another after 7. This notion of ‘serendipitous rewards’  is new to the advertising world and preserves the element of surprise, as well as internal motivation. It also taps into human nature’s proclivity for instant gratification.

Brands that participate with Kiip’s rewards network have a range of options for how their products are integrated into the games. There are currently 32 different types of reward mechanisms, and brands can offer anything from actual product to redemption codes.

Innovation in marketing strategies and solving the mobile monetization conundrum are two major secrets of Kiip’s success. Banner advertising and traditional display mechanisms can be frustrating for users, whereas unlocking a Kiip reward is a positive experience.

“Brands pay to be a part of these moments,” Wong said. “Advertisements are the connection brands make with a consumer, and we isolate this connection and make it much more powerful. It is intimate and about love. No-one will ever love an ad, but it is easy to love a reward.”

Wong will continue to think outside the box with $11 million in his pocket. He plans to enhance the technology to get the right reward to the right person at the right time. The money will also go towards doubling the team, which currently consists of 30 people. The round was spearheaded by True Ventures and Hummer Winbland.

Kiip was founded in September 2010 with headquarters in San Francisco.

[Photo credit: Michael O'Donnell]

Filed under: deals, games, VentureBeat

It’s been amazing how technology-enabled aggregation can make certain things in life so much easier — spaces such such as travel planning, real estate searching, and news reading come to mind. But when it comes to the financial space, that disruption hasn’t quite happened yet. Most of us have a retirement account here, a checking and savings account there, a credit card or two somewhere else, and so on. And we still deal with each one on its own. Getting one picture of your entire financial portfolio is not a very common thing.

That’s where Personal Capital wants to come in. The company, which launched last year, provides a suite of software aimed at helping people manage their investments, banking and personal finances — no matter where they are — through one central suite of web and mobile apps. Personal Capital is supported by some real industry weight: Its CEO and founder is Bill Harris, who was the longtime chief exec at Intuit, and thus far the company has taken on $27 million in venture capital funding. Earlier this month Personal Captial was named “Best In Show” at the FinovateSpring, a conference in San Francisco focused on all things financial and technology related, so it certainly seems to be onto something big.

So when Personal Capital put out its first iPhone app last week, we asked Harris and product VP Jim Del Favero to stop by TechCrunch TV and give us a hands-on look at the service. Watch the video above to hear about why it’s a good thing to show your “entire financial life” in one place, how Personal Capital is different from other financial software providers such as Mint and SigFig, why people about to cash in through the Facebook IPO should manage their money in a modern way, and more.

Birchbox, the New York City-based startup that provides a monthly delivery service of beauty and personal care product samples, seemed like a lark to some when it first came on the scene back in September 2010. At that time, web startups aimed at the female demographic existed, but the space has grown to be much stronger since then. And Birchbox’s business model itself was a bit confusing to some people. Would anyone really pay $10 a month to get a box full of stuff they didn’t specifically ask for?

Since then, of course, Birchbox has been validated a few times over. Female-oriented websites have skyrocketed — Pinterest, anyone? — and the subscription commerce space has taken off as well, with the debuts of companies such as Kiwi Crate (kids’ toys), Babbaco (educational products), StitchFix (women’s clothing) Citrus Lane (baby products), and a number of others. Today, Birchbox now has more than 100,000 paying subscribers, a staff of 60 full-time employees, and has raised nearly $12 million in venture capital funding.

So when we heard that Birchbox co-founder Katia Beauchamp (pronounced “Beechum”) was in San Francisco this past week, we invited her to swing by TechCrunch TV to give us an in-person update on how things are going at her company. You can watch our full interview in the video embedded above, but here are some of the topics we touched on:

Going Beyond The Makeup Space

Earlier this month, Birchbox debuted its first ever offering aimed at males, “Birchbox Man.” At a higher price point ($20 per month), Birchbox Man boxes contain a wider variety of items beyond personal care and grooming products: Gadgets, snack items, games, and the like are part of the package.

According to Beauchamp, this is just the first step in Birchbox’s goal of using this platform for items that go beyond makeup. In fact, she said, that’s been the plan from day one — it’s why the startup wasn’t called something like Beautybox. “That’s why we named the company Birchbox,” she said. “It could be more. It’s really exciting in beauty, but it could be more.”

The Tech Underlying The Pretty Exterior

There is some real technology underlying Birchbox’s pretty products and presentation — and Beauchamp says the company is working hard at making that better and deeper by adding to its full-time tech team (currently at 10 people.) “We have an obscene amount of data about our customers and that is all going into the delivery of the box and what our customers are experiencing,” Beauchamp said. “There’s never been a platform that allows you to be a subscription service, have a content CMS, and also have a full e-commerce service, all blended into that with a backend that knows who you are. So, it is complicated.”

Thoughts On The F Words (Female Founders)

Since most venture capital partners are male, the average VC was not exactly in Birchbox’s target market. But that does not mean that female-driven companies should feel intimidated by the fundraising process, Beauchamp said.

“What I’d say about being a female is that it’s not something to worry about so much. I think it’s really important that if you have a product that’s geared towards not the people you’re pitching to [for VC investment], you can still really focus on having a conversation around just the facts and your logical interpretation [of them], and around how you’re going to create demand for something new and change behavior,” she said. “It’s important to try to make it resonate for them based on those things, and not just the attributes of, ‘Wouldn’t you like to get a fun new lip gloss every month,’ which is not going to resonate so much.”

Citrus Lane, the Mountain View, California-based e-commerce startup that provides a subscription delivery service of products specifically for families with infants and toddlers, has raised $5.1 million in a new round of venture capital funding from GGV Capital and previous investor Greylock Partners.

The round serves as Citrus Lane’s Series A, and brings its total outside investment to $6.5 million (Greylock led a $1.5 million seed round for the company back in March 2011.) The new money will be used mainly for hiring to expand Citrus Lane’s full-time staff of 14 employees and building out its technology, co-founder and CEO Mauria Finley said in an interview this week.

As TechCrunch reported earlier this month, for a $25 monthly subscription fee Citrus Lane sends a box filled with four to five hand-selected baby and kids’ products based on the gender and age of the subscriber’s child. Typically, Citrus Lane’s selections have a green, eco-friendly, and/or organic slant.

The company does not accept money from companies in exchange for featuring their products. Citrus Lane’s selection process is much like how magazines are sent hundreds of free products for review, but ultimately it’s up to the editorial staff to curate what is featured in the magazine each month, Finley explained. Companies often provide their goods to Citrus Lane for free or at a discount, since subscribers often become paying customers to brands they first discover through the service.

Citrus Lane has been shipping boxes since July 2011, and while Finley would not provide any specific usage numbers, she did say that the company currently has subscribers in every state as well as Puerto Rico. “Revenue has doubled since January, and will double again in June,” Finley said.

Talking to Finley, what was especially compelling to me (and something that I imagine attracted investors as well) is that Citrus Lane’s founders seem to be the full package: They have real technical and business chops, but are also women themselves who understand the needs of their customer base. Finley is a mother of two who graduated with a CS degree from Stanford before going on to work years in high-level positions at Netscape, AOL and eBay; her co-founder and CTO Claire Hough previously was in charge of hundreds of engineers in various roles as a senior technical executive at NexTag.

“We have a really great technology and quant marketing teams, and we are building all sorts of algorithmic understanding that we’re confident will run circles around other companies in the space,” Finley said. “But the secret and the heart of this is that we really believe in the customer, and we believe in the mission of helping moms find the right products for their kids.”

That combination is what Finley says will help Citrus Lane keep an edge in the increasingly hot and competitive market for parent- and family-focused startups. And of course, it’s a pretty crazy world out there for startups in general, so having some real heart in the game certainly always helps.

Zattikka, a London-based maker of browser and mobile games, has gone public on the London Stock Exchange.

The company is a social game developer that is making a Monty Python game in collaboration with the Ministry of Silly Games. It listed with a price of $1.58 a share and a market capitalization of $34.8 million. It is trading under the ticker code ZATT. Proceeds from the public offering will be $20 million.

The company said it is acquiring three game studios with the money. The deals include the acquisition of soccer management game specialist Hattrick Holdings, casual gaming studio Sneaky Games and art and design house Concept Art House. Zattikka now plans to expand its publishing operations and offer a wider range of games on digital platforms in Europe, the U.S. and China. It also plans more acquisitions.

Mark Opzoomer, CEO of Zattikka, told Gamasutra, “We are delighted to list on AIM to provide the capital base and incentivise the entrepreneurs joining our group.”

He added, “We begin with a strong group of companies with operations in key gaming centres in the USA, China and Europe, a mix of revenues across subscriptions, virtual goods and work for hire with an exceptional team of talent. We have a great opportunity before us to accelerate the growth of this initial group across multi-platforms to create a world class games entertainment group.”

Zattikka previously raised $5.5 million in a venture capital funding in 2010. Notion Capital led that round and it was joined by individual angels including Harald Ludwig, co-chair of Lionsgate Entertainment. The company was founded in 2009 by Opzoomer and Tim Chaney, two former Virgin Games executives.

Filed under: games, social, VentureBeat

ShoeDazzle, the subscription service that sends out its own selection of women’s shoe designs curated each month by celebrities and Hollywood stylists, has expanded its offerings to include women’s clothing and lingerie.

ShoeDazzle CEO Bill Strauss said in an interview (embedded above) that the expansion was inspired by the company’s subscribers, who have been asking for clothing to match ShoeDazzle’s shoes for months. ShoeDazzle, based in Santa Monica, Calif., was founded in 2009 and counts reality star Kim Kardashian as a co-founder and its “chief fashion stylist.”

The company has also tweaked its business model to let people buy items as often as they like, rather than on a once-per-month subscription basis.

ShoeDazzle has had robust growth recently, Strauss said, with its member base expanding from 3 million to 10 million within the past 12 months. Now that its offerings go beyond shoes, the company is considering a name change, but has not made a final decision as of yet. ShoeDazzle has raised some $60 million in venture capital funding and is not looking to raise more money at the moment, Strauss said.

Watch the video above to see Strauss discuss the expansion to clothing, how ShoeDazzle stacks up against competitors such as Beachmint, how ShoeDazzle designs and commissions its own products in-house, and why fashion and technology are really coming together right now.

Seed funding, the backbone of startups looking to get off the ground, grew last year according to the 2011 Internet/Digital Media and Software Industries Seed Financing Survey from Silicon Valley law firm Fenwick & West.

The firm released its second seed funding survey Thursday; the report tracked how much seed funding startups on the West Coast reported in 2010 and 2011. Data was gathered from 56 transactions in 2011 and 52 deals in 2010.

From 2010 to 2011, seeding funding transactions rose three percent, from 43 to 46 percent. However, of all companies surveyed by Fenwick and West in 2010 that received some sort of seed funding, only 45 percent went on to get venture capital funding. Only 12 percent received subsequent rounds of seed funding, while others were acquired, shut down, had no data available, or received no additional funding at all and are still up and running.

It’s great to see that funding is on the rise, but since less than half of the startups were able to secure venture capital, it shows that many startups aren’t moving forward and growing. On the flip side, the survey does point out that right now it is a “good environment for entrepreneurs” because investors are making faster decisions and startups that receive later rounds of funding are also receiving high valuations.

The survey also focused on the changes in convertible notes, the bonds that allow entrepreneurs to keep equity ownership, which grew in 2011. Startups rose a median $1 million in convertible note deals in 2011, up from $662,500 in 2010. In addition, the median valuation cap on convertible notes rose from $4.0 million in 2010 to $7.5 million in 2011.

Complete results of the survey can be found on Fenwick & West’s website.

Filed under: Entrepreneur, VentureBeat

Adam Rothenberg (left) with David Cohen and David Tisch

“The thing I remember about Adam was that he was always there,” says Caren Maio, founder and CEO of the real-estate startup Nestio. One night Maio was freaking out about finances when Adam Rothenberg, director of Techstars NY, wheeled his chair over from a nearby desk.

“I had to do my taxes, I had to draw up my Profit&Loss to potential investors, the really hard part of being a startup. He had the financial background and was just really instrumental getting our books together, that first time startup stuff that can really hurt you if you don’t do it right,” sayd Maio.

TechStars announced its third class in New York city today. The startup incubator, first started in Boulder, Colorado, puts young companies through a three month boot camp where they polish their idea, structure a business, and form ties with mentors and investors. It’s often compared to Paul Graham’s Y Combinator in San Francisco, except that TechStars takes a franchise approach, with programs in cities around the nation.

The New York program, which was launched in 2010, has graduated 23 companies so far, 21 of whom have raised a total of more than $50 million in venture capital funding. 14 companies will be joining the new class, hoping to follow in the footsteps of successful graduates like Crowdtwist, OnSwipe and Coursekit.

When Rothenberg arrived at TechStars, fresh out of a stint at a local hedge fund, he was quiet. “I don’t mean this as a put down, but Adam did the administrative stuff. When he first got there it seemed like he was soaking it all in, just making sure the trains ran on time,” says Irving Fain, CEO of CrowdTwist.

It was David Tisch, the avuncular scion of a legendary New York family, who became the public face of TechStars, on a reality show about the program that aired on Bloomberg TV. “They balance each other out,” says Irving, “David is this ball of energy and Adam is very low key, very consistent.”

For the three years before he joined TechStars, Rothenberg was with Zimmer Lucas Partners, a long/short equity hedge fund on Madison Avenue. “He was very bright, really a pleasure to work with,” said Louis Shamie, a director at Zimmer Lucas who worked on the same research team with Rothenberg, “But over time you got the sense that looking at the same dozen or so companies in a very specific, mature industry couldn’t keep him interested, even though, in the short term, he could have done very well financially.”

His colleagues in finance were a little mystified by his choice of TechStars. “We are used to looking at companies that are publicly traded, where you can point to hard assests. That is the model Adam learned out of college, the nitty gritty understanding of how, ‘much is this piece of steel on the ground worth?’” said Shamie. “Techstars is much more about investing in an idea, trying to imagine where people will be a few years down the line.”

Rothenberg’s girlfriend, Jessica Kreps, works in sales at a Manhattan art gallery. “We both thought it was a risk, moving from finance into this new program that not many people in New York had heard of,” Kreps told VentureBeat. “The first time I visited it seemed kind of like a summer camp for grown ups, all these young people drinking beer and playing ping pong.”

But while he was quiet and in the background at first, as Rothenberg became more comfortable with the mentors and startups, he proved himself as a valuable connector. “He was very good at matching us with mentors and heping to get that first client in the door,” said Maio.

The three month program at TechStars is a whirlwind ride for many startups. Some have to come up with a business, find talent and raise funds at the same time. “He was really good at getting a read on investors. He would come up to you and say, ‘I think this is how your should approach them,’” said Irving.

In fact Mr. Rothenberg is an active investor himself, partnering with Mr. Tisch in the BoxGroup, which has backed startups like Fab, Groupme, and Boxee. I met with Rothenberg in a Greenwich Village cafe, on a rainy Manhattan morning. Like his boss David Tisch, he has long, curly brown hair and an unshaven mug.

“I’m really excited about this third class,” he said, sipping coffee. “We went ahead and made some asks in terms of mentors I don’t think we felt confident doing the first time, and we have folks like Eric Hippeau, Seth Godin and Esther Dyson advising the TechStars companies.”

The stakes are higher for this new class of companies. In September, the program changed its offering to each startup from $18,000 to $118,000 after raising a $24 million fund. The Bloomberg reality show turned the incubator into a well known, and closely watched, breeding ground for hot startups. But Rothenberg says he has no plans to step out into the spotlight. “If everyone thinks TechStars is a one man show, that’s fine with me.” he told VentureBeat, sipping his coffee. “I’m in this for the long term. When I was working in finance, we were dealing with mature companies. Now I get a chance to interact with early stage teams, where my advice can make a big difference. I’m excited to see how that plays out.”

Check out the 14 companies in the newest class of TechStars New York >>

Filed under: Entrepreneur

Cloud computing and desktop virtualization are rapidly growing trends in the tech world, and one company has spent a considerable amount of time developing this technology. Nivio, which started as an idea in 2004, announced today it has received $21 million in its first round of venture capital funding.

Nivio lets you store up to 10GB of your documents, music, and movies in the cloud for free with nDrive. Your files sync across all of your devices — tablets, desktops, and laptops. And when you make changes to a document, Nivio saves bandwidth by only sending the changes you made, not the entire file.

But file storage isn’t all Nivio has up its sleeves. Its break-out product is nDesktop, the most current version of Windows that lives in the cloud and can be accessed on Macs, PCs, or tablets.

“We are delivering the next generation experience to the customer, so they can access their files and operation system without thinking about where they last worked on a file or worrying about maintenance of their machine,” Nivio chief executive Sachin Duggal told VentureBeat, ”We tell our customers not to worry about their old hardware, we will find the best way to deliver Windows to you.”

Duggal said Nivio has been working on cloud computing technology for the past seven and half years. Its three offerings — nDrive, nDesktop, and nApps — are available in several different packages aimed at students, educators, and small businesses.

The company’s nApps service lets you rent a program for 30 days rather than purchasing a full app or piece of software. The app store already has the full Microsoft Office suite and free apps such as Twitter and Evernote. The company is also in talks with Adobe to offer its products. In keeping with the cloud trend, you can access the app wherever you can access nDesktop. The service is especially helpful for students who may only need a program for one or two projects and can’t afford to buy the software outright.

Nivio is not the groundbreaker in the cloud desktop computing space; Citrix offers desktop virtualization and app downloads, but it focuses on enterprise customers. OnLive Desktop, another cloud desktop computing service, lets you run a pared down version of Windows on the iPad, although it will support more devices soon. Nivio, however, is much more focused on students and small businesses and claims to have put more development into its technology.

Nivio plans to use the substantial investment, led by Videocon and AEC Partners, to grow its product, expand its engineering team, and roll out its services in Europe, the Middle East, India, and Australia.

The company is based in Palo Alto, Calif., and Geneva, Switzerland, with offices in London and Delhi. So far Nivio has more than 120 employees and has raised close to $30 million in funding from Deutsche Bank and private investors.

Filed under: cloud, deals

Game fundings destroyed the record book for fundings this year as 145 companies raised more than $1.540 billion in 2011, not counting initial public offerings.

In 2011, games took center stage. Game investment changed fundamentally during the year, as investors shifted their money into social, mobile and online games as they chased after users who were embracing the newest platforms for games.

The total game investment number is up more than 47 percent from the $1.05 billion raised by 91 companies a year ago, based on VentureBeat’s own research. By comparison, 115 game companies raised a total of $663.1 million in 2009. And in 2008, 112 game companies raised $936.8 million.

Keep in mind that Nexon raised $1.2 billion and Zynga raised $1 billion in their IPOs in 2011, bringing the total amount of capital raised by game companies to $3.75 billion.

Even if you don’t count those two IPOs, venture capital funding for games has never been bigger. Zynga, the social gaming giant and creator of FarmVille and CityVille, accounted for a third of all of the venture funding raised in 2011.

Those numbers chronicle the biggest gold rush in the history of games. Just a few years ago, venture capitalists were afraid to invest in games because they were a lot like Hollywood movies, where it was too hard to pick the hits. But the collision of the web, social, mobile and online gaming trends led to a huge disruption for the industry and lots of opportunities for game startups.

Major VC firms such as Accel Partners, Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, DCM, Andreessen Horowitz, and others all poured money into big game companies this year. Google Ventures became an active strategic investor as it recruited startups to make games for its Google+ social network.

Powered by the success of games such as Rovio’s Angry Birds, mobile game startups came into their own during the year, raising as much as $18 million per round.

Investors and startups saw huge exits, starting with Electronic Arts’ purchase of PopCap Games for $750 million in cash and stock plus $550 million in potential bonuses.

We’ve chronicled the gold rush religiously ourselves but have also pulled data for these fundings from the internet at large, the Internet DealBook, Digi-Capital, and the National Venture Capital Association.

We’ve ranked them here in order of the amount of money raised, and I’ve linked to our coverage or to those or who covered the funding. If there were no stories on the funding, I linked to the company’s own web site. Fundings where the amounts weren’t made public are listed alphabetically at the end. If you’ve heard of others, please note in the comments and we’ll add them to the list.

The list includes companies that raised funds in prior years but disclosed for the first time in 2011. It’s likely that some companies from last year’s list or this year’s have gone out of business. If so, let us know in the comments. We expect that we’ll be revising the list upward in the coming weeks as we add more deals that we didn’t know about.

This year, we decided to add fundings that involved gamification, or the use of game mechanics in non-game applications.

Each company link takes you back to the story we wrote about the company. In the rare cases where we did not cover the story, the link takes you back to another publication’s story on the funding. Happy reading.

1. Nexon — $1.2B for initial public offering on Tokyo Stock Exchange. Investors: the public. Dec. 13.

2. Zynga — $1B for initial public offering on Nasdaq. Investors: the public. Dec. 16.

3. Zynga — $490M for strategic expansion. Investors: Morgan Stanley, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity Investments, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Feb. 1.

4. Kabam — $85M for hardcore games on social networks. Investors: Google Ventures, Pinnacle Ventures, Performance Equity and SK Telecom Ventures, as well as existing investors. May 26. (Kabam CEO Kevin Chou pictured right).

5. Razer — $50M for gaming peripherals and hardware. Investors: IDG-Accel China Capital. Dec. 20.

6. Rovio — $42M for mobile games such as Angry Birds. Investors: Accel Partners, Felicis, and Atomico. March 10.

7. OnLive — $40M for games-on-demand service. Investors: HTC. Feb. 9.

8. 6waves Lolapps — $35M for social and mobile games. Investors: Nexon. Aug. 3.

9. Lumosity — $32.5M for brain-training games. Investors: Menlo Ventures, FirstMark Capital, Harrison Metal and Norwest Venture Partners. June 16.

10. Kabam — $30M for hardcore social games. Investors: Redpoint Ventures and Intel Capital. Jan. 20.

11. Gaikai — $30M for game-streaming technology. Investors: NEA, Qualcomm, Benchmark Capital, Rustic Canyon and Intel Capital.  July 20.

12. Happy Elements — $30M for Chinese social games. Investors: Legend Capital, DCM. Oct. 16.

13. Tapjoy — $30M for mobile ad network and monetization services. Investors: J.P.Morgan and existing investors. July 5.

14. Online Warmongers — $25M for free-to-play online games such as War Inc. Battlezone. Investors: Cybergun. Aug. 25.

15. Wooga — $24M for social games on Facebook. Investors: Highland Capital Partners, Tenaya Capital, Balderton Capital, and Holtzbrinck Ventures. May 30.

16. CrowdStar — $23M for social, mobile and Asian online games. Investors: Intel Capital, Time Warner Investments, The9 and NVInvestments. May 23.

17. Funzio — $20M for social games such as Crime City (pictured right). Investors: IDG Ventures in the U.S. and IDG Capital Partners in China. May 10.

18. Gazillion — $20M for online game worlds. Investors: Temasek Holdings, Revolution Ventures, Oak Investments, Hearst Corp., Pellon Ventures, Abu Dhabi Media. Nov. 8.

19. Kixeye — $18M for hardcore games on Facebook. Investors: Jafco Ventures, Trinity Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners. Aug. 4.

20. Papaya Mobile — $18M for mobile social gaming network. Investors: Keystone Ventures and DCM. April 27.

21. TinyCo — $18M for social mobile games. Investors: Andreessen Horowitz. Feb. 25.

22. Zeebo — $17M for interactive education console for kids. Investors: undisclosed. Aug. 29.

23. Fourth Wall Studios — $15M for alternative reality entertainment. Investors: California Capital Equity. March 8.

24. Raptr — $15M for gamer social network. Investors: DAG Ventures, Tenaya Capital and Accel Partners. Feb 10.

25. Rumble Entertainment — $15M for mobile and browser-based games. Investors: Google Ventures and Khosla Ventures. Dec. 1.

26. CocoaChina — $14M for mobile games in China. Investors: Sequoia Capital China, Steamboat Ventures, Northern Light Venture Capital. Aug. 26.

27. Nubee — $13M for mobile games in Singapore. Investors: Vega Corp. Dec. 10.

28. SNS Plus — $12.5M for Asian social games. Investors: WI Harper Group and Matrix Partners. Nov. 28.

29. Badgeville — $12M to create a platform to gamifiy web sites. Investors: Norwest Venture Partners, El Dorado Ventures, Trinity Ventures and Webb Investment Network. July 13.

30. Digital Chocolate – $12M for social and mobile games. Investors: Intel Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures, and Bridgescale Ventures. Feb. 22. (CEO Trip Hawkins, pictured right).

31. Kontagent — $12M to expand social analytics service into mobile. Investors: Battery Ventures, Maverick Capital, and Altos Ventures.  Nov. 10.

32. Rivet Games — $12M (estimated) for web, social and mobile games. Investors: Softbank Capital, Baseline Ventures, Floodgate, and Outpoint Capital. April 20.

33. Supercell – $12M for hardcore real-time social games. Investors: Accel Partners and Klaas Kersting. May 25.

34. Unity Technologies — $12M to expand market for Unity 3D engine and game development tools. Investors: WestSummit Capital and iGlobe Partners. July 21. Pictured: David Helgason, CEO, right; Joachim Ante, chief technology officer, pictured left, and Nicholas Francis, chief creative officer, pictured center.

35. HealthTap — $11.5M for gamification of communication in doctor-patient relationships. Investors: Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, Mohr Davidow Ventures, and Mayfield Fund. Dec. 6.

36. Peak Games – $11.5M for social gaming in emerging markets. Investors: Earlybird Venture Capital, Hummingbird Ventures and an unnamed strategic investor. Sept. 27.

37. DreamBox Learning — $11M for adaptive learning education games. Investors: Reed Hastings and John Doerr. Dec. 7.

38. Tiny Speck — $10.7M for web games such as Glitch. Investors: Andreessen Horowitz and Accel Partners. April 12.

39. OMGPOP — $10.1M for social game site. Investors: Spark Capital, Betaworks, Rho Capital and Softbank. June 1.

40. Moca World — $10M for mobile social networking games. Investor: Infinity Venture Partners. June 14.

41. Funcom — $10M for massively multiplayer online games. Investors: Stelt Holding. Dec. 13.

42. Idle Games — $10M for social games based on its proprietary Idle Engine, with social recommendations. Investors: not disclosed. Oct. 13.

43. Sourcebits – $10M for mobile games and apps. Investors: Sequoia Capital and IDG Ventures. May 11.

44. A List Games — $9.3M for marketing games via digital distribution. Investors: The Ayzenberg Group. Nov. 21.

45. Red Robot Labs — $8.5M for location-based mobile games. Investors: Benchmark Capital, Shasta Ventures, Playdom co-founder Rick Thompson, former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya. Sept. 14. CEO Mike Ouye, pictured left, and chief product officer Pete Hawley, pictured right.

46. Icarus Studios – $8.1M for online game development platform. Investors: undisclosed. March 24.

47. Kobojo — $7.75M for social games in France. Investors: Endeavour Vision and IDInvest Partners. April 26.

48. Ignite Game Technologies — $7.5M for online racing games. Investors: Steve Bellotti and Bill Budinger. July 12.

49. Rocket Ninja — $7.5M for social games. Investors: Marcel Boekhoom. Nov. 22.

Filed under: deals, dev, games, mobile, social