Early stage venture roundup

SAN FRANCISCO (Private Equity Week) - Nine U.S.-based technology companies last week raised early stage financing from venture capitalists last week, according to Thomson Reuters.

The group of newly funded startups included Gist, a 1-year-old, Seattle-based startup incubated at Vulcan Capital, the venture firm created by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Gist raised a $6.75 million Series A, led by the Foundry Group, with participation from Vulcan.

Gist was founded by CEO T.A. McCann, a well-known Seattle entrepreneur who also worked in Microsoft Corp.'s Exchange Server Group.

McCann was most recently an entrepreneur-in-residence at Vulcan. Before that, he was with Polaris Venture Partners. His online bio also says that he once won sailing's America's Cup and sailed around the world.

The startup, in beta testing right now, aims to integrate email on Outlook "intelligently," aggregating, organizing and prioritizing messages, links and related information about one's contacts, including from traditional news sources online and blogs. The funding comes a little more than a month after San Francisco-based rival Xobni Corp. raised late stage funding from Atomico Ventures, Baseline Ventures, Cisco Systems, First Round Capital and Khosla Ventures. Xobni has raised nearly $15 million since 2007.

Here are more details about the startups that raised early stage financing last week:

COMMUNICATIONS

Everbridge

Los Angeles, CA

www.everbridge.com

Amount/Round: $3M/Series A

Investors: ABS Ventures

Details: Develops emergency notification systems for mass calling of emergency events and incidents. The company, f.k.a. 3n Global, has now raised $9M for the Series A round.

CONSUMER INTERNET

IMShopping

Santa Clara, Calif.

www.imshopping.com

Amount/Round: $4.7M/Series A

Investors: SK Telecom

Details: Operates a Twitter-based online shopping service. Min Park and Soo-Hyuk Lee, senior vice president at SK Telecom, have joined the board.

ECOMMERCE

Onestop Internet

Los Angeles, CA

www.onestop.com

Amount/Round: $13.3M/Series A

Investors: Bessemer Venture Partners

Details: Provides outsource e-commerce services, mostly to retail brands.

EMAIL

Gist Inc.

Seattle, WA

www.gist.com

Amount/Round: $6.75M/Series A

Investors: Foundry Group (led), Vulcan Capital

Details: Operates an email service that provides links to news, events and blog posts. The company was initially funded by Vulcan Capital.

ENERGY

Green Energy Technologies

Akron, Ohio

www.getsmartenergy.com

Amount/Round: $2M/Series A

Investors: Roth Bros. Inc.

Details: Develops a wind turbine system installed on the rooftops of commercial and industrial power users.

HEALTH CARE

Vermedx Inc.

Burlington, Vt.

www.vermedx.com

Amount/Round: $500K/Series A

Investors: Fresh Tracks Capital

Details: Develops health care IT for the diabetes market.

MED TECH

Nittany Polymedics

State College, Penn.

URL NA

Amount/Round: $750K/seed stage

Investors: Life Sciences Greenhouse

Details: Develops polymers used in medical and dental products.

SOFTWARE

Azuki Systems

Acton, MA

www.azukisystems.com

Amount/Round: $6M/Series A

Investors: Kepha Partners, Sigma Partners

Details: Develops software for mobile devices. The funding brings the Series A round total to $12M.

Zendesk

Boston

www.zendesk.com

Amount/Round: NA/Series A

Investors: Charles River Ventures

Details: Develops software-as-a-service for help desk systems. Customers include Twitter, MSNBC.com and Rackspace Cloud.