SoundCloud has just raised a $50M round. It had raised series A, 2009 where it raised €2.5M from Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures. Then it raised $10M in Series B in January 2011 fromUnion Square Ventures and Index Ventures.

Soundcloud was founded in Stockholm by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, who late moved the company to Berlin.

The company says it had 5M users as of June 2011. Soundcloud has a freemium model which scales up to €500 per year.

In 2011, Soundcloud sought to placate record labels by introducing regulations to stem piracy.

Alex Ljung - SoundCloud 1 of 2 from FounderLY on Vimeo.

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With a stock price that is off over 87 percent over the last year, China Sunergy (CSUND :NASDAQ) is hitting the public relations trail two days before Christmas in attempt to gain some "Yule Tide spirit" for its shares by announcing they have shipped 1.59 megawatts of solar panels to Scotland.

The panels are part of a program that addresses people living in "fuel poverty" in the United Kingdom. "Fuel poverty" is defined as people who need to spend more than 10 percent of their household income on electricity for their household. The tenants of the buildings will receive electricity free of charge for 25 years.

Emotion Energy, in partnership with Edison Energy, will be installing the panels on the rooftops of 117 households in Faifley, Scotland for the Knowes Housing Association Scotland.

China Sunergy's CEO Stephen Cai said, "the U.K. is an important market, and we are very pleased to play our part in this very vivid example showing how solar energy can improve people's daily lives and keep them warm during this holiday season."

While we can't disagree with the importance of having heat in the Winter, we hardly believe the U.K. is an important solar market. Unless China Sunergy has developed a panel that can be mounted on a thatched roof, we think wind generated electricity will play a greater role in serving the United Kingdom's electricity needs.

Shares of China Sunergy were up 5.36 percent to $1.57 in afternoon trading.

Despite the recent crash in solar stocks, Germany's Soltec held a grand opening ceremony for its 200 megawatt (MW) plant in San Diego.

Soltec has a valid reason to open the plant as they will be supplying over 300 MW of concentration photovoltaic modules to San Diego Gas & Electric. Last month the California Public Utilities Commission approved 155 MW of power purchase agreements (PPAs) and Tenaska Solar Ventures is developing another 150 MW that will be delivered to San Diego Gas & Electric under a power purchase agreement.

While dark clouds hover over the solar companies, today's announcement should give investors a little more confidence in the besieged industry as companies like First Solar (FSLR :NASDAQ) and San Jose's SunPower (SPWR :NASDAQ) continue to decline.

And solar power is important to the state of California as it is committed to receiving 33 percent of its electricity from renewable energy sources by 2020.

Buffer is a tool for Twitter and Facebook power users to help them to optimize when to tweet. There are any number of check lists to help you to gather followers, but time of day and frequency are leading aids. Given that the number of Twitter follows equals power and fortune for some people, Buffer has an ROI. And it charges users anywhere from free to $100 per month.

We have met with the Buffer team and get the sense that they are indeed getting people to fork over for the service. It's not totally clear that other companies cannot replicate this service. Twitter could even add it for free although it doesn't seem likely.

We do think they have built a good offering and users quickly despite a lot of adversity.

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Just when solar investors thought their investments couldn't drop any lower, First Solar (FSLR :NASDAQ) announced the equivalent of an investment "blackout" by lowering 2011 guidance and offering less than inspiring 2012 guidance. Shares of the Phoenix-based solar manufacturer immediately plummeted at the opening bell, but is now the time to buy or will the freefall continue?

Since February 17, 2011, shares of First Solar have dropped over 80 percent in part due to eroding subsidies for solar projects, eroding margins due to oversupply in the industry and increased competition. And unless European governments decide to reverse their actions and improve their feed-in tariffs, demand in traditionally strong selling markets, like Germany and Italy, will continue to weaken.

Competition will remain strong as Chinese manufacturers including Suntech Power (STP :NYSE), Trina Solar (TSL :NYSE), and Yingli Green Energy (YGE ;NYSE) continue to produce large amounts of solar panels forcing prices to remain extremely competitive.

To separate itself from its competitors, First Solar announced in their conference call this morning that they were focusing on markets that were not subsidy focused including the Middle East, China, and Africa.

This new strategy will not result in stellar numbers for 2012. First Solar offered guidance of net sales in the range of $3.7 billion to $4.0 billion resulting in earnings of $3.75 to $4.25 per share. This is much weaker than the analysts' range for 2012 from $5.00 to $10.00 per share with the average analyst forecast being $7.40 per share.

So as First Solar falls 20 percent in afternoon trading today, many investors are wondering why they should hold onto, or buy, First Solar. There are several strong reasons today's drop has created a strong buying opportunity.

First Solar expects to install 1.2 GW (gigawatts) of utility-scale plants in 2012, of which 80 percent is under contract. Overall First Solar expects to produce over 2 GW of modules. This number is lower than expected as the company plans on running its plants at 80 percent capacity. Running at lower capacity will allow the company to cut its costs.

At lower capacity in this new business plan, First Solar expects to produce modules at a consumer friendly $0.72 per watt. If the company were running its plants at full capacity, they believe that number would drop to $0.65 per watt. Most of its competition would not be able to match that production price and still remain profitable.

Finally, First Solar's numbers for 2012 are extremely achievable. In the past the company has set some pretty aggressive numbers for guidance but 2012 numbers should set the company up for some easy wins when they report quarterly earnings in 2012.

While there is some risk betting on a company that is changing its business model, ultimately we think the company will succeed and are putting a 52-week price target of $50 per share.

Jive Software saw an opening gain of 26% after increasing both the share size and price of the deal.

The company's stock opened at $15.12 a share on the Nasdaq, up from its iPO price of $12.

JIve sells a SaaS package of social business software that includes internal blogs and social profiles. It is now used by 657 customers, including HP, SAP and UBS.

We have used Jive and like it. We think it can improve company cohesiveness. But we feel that it's not the answer to corporate communications.

Jive says that its primary competition comes from Microsoft, IBM and Salesforce.com. We have to disagree as we think that Jive's primary competition will come from free, open-source software. Jive is not cheap and for the price it offers value but its not clear why open source software can't accomplish what Jive does.

A company can use WordPress, for example, to do nearly everything you need from Jive. Sure a large company like HP might feel better paying Jive for the software but as other companies go the open source route larger companies might re-think that.

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We have heard nothing but rave reviews from Uber's clients. Sure the technology is thin - order your car service by cell phone and track it. But for many the taxi system is just so low tech that anything that improves the system is welcome.

It's fun to see that Menlo Ventures' Shervin Pishevar blogs that he was the son of an immigrant cab driver, so Uber has special meaning to him. Uber is his largest investment to date and he compares Uber to a Fedex in the making.

The deal was announced at Le Web in Paris and Uber also announced that they were launching their service in Paris. The plan going forward is simply to launch in new cities. They will also be hiring more drivers. The company uses others' services, with about a 1/2 to 1/3rd of drivers dedicated to Uber.

The company charges a premium for its convenience, though, with fares costing 50% to 75% more than a yellow taxi. Still, despite the haters, the have's are shelling out at those rates.

We have had an awful experience with Gilt Groupe's Gilt City to report on. Here are the facts. You can decide if this is fraud or incompetence.

+ The Deal. We purchased a 5 RT ticket package from Gilt City in August to fly in their mid-range trips which must be used by June 2012 . We paid $1521. Our plan was to take a vacation from San Francisco to Cabo San Lucas. We were excited about the deal and promoted it to our friends.

+ Expectations. There were black-out dates of course and we knew we wouldn't be able to pick the exact flights on the exact days but given that we had 10 months to work with we had no doubt we could find a flights that would work.

+ Booking. We did not book immediately in August 2011because our kids' school had not yet published the calender. In September we searched VirginAmerica.com to book our flights but there were none available. We waited two months for flights to open but by November there are still no flights. Virgin America told us to contact Gilt City for a refund.

+ Gilt City's Response. We contacted Gilt City expecting them to either refund us or to address the situation with Virgin America. Instead Gilt City's support team informed us that they would neither reimburse nor help with Virgin. We should have booked earlier they told us. So we have 9 months before the vouchers are set to expire and there is no way to book a family vacation and they tell us that we didn't plan ahead. We asked Gilt City to escalate our request but we have heard from nobody.

We post this for selfish reasons, hoping that Gilt City will make good. We plan one family vacation per year and we think it's unacceptable that we lose our vacation this year because Gilt City didn't coordinate with Virgin America and didn't express to their buyers that their are extreme risks here.

We also post it as a warning to others who may want to purchase travel through Gilt City. We had read warnings about Gilt City Travel so we want to add to the protest.

Finally, we post this in keeping with the mission of the a:c, to provide analysis of tech companies. Gilt Groupe is one of the great NYC success stories, but clearly they are over-extending into travel and if they continue to hose customers like this it will tarnish the company's brand.

Below are the screens we see from Virgin American after we enter our voucher numbers from Gilt City.

From Gilt City:
> Good to hear from you again,
>
> We are now able to view your Virgin America vouchers through order
> #sxsxsxs. We offered this sale early in the season so that our members
> would have the opportunity to book their flights before flights were full.
> For this reason we are not able to refund your voucher. We can confirm that
> your vouchers are valid for Virgin America.
>
> You may choose to contact Virgin America directly to see what they may
> offer you in regards to extending the voucher redemption dates and flight
> availability.
>
> http://www.virginamerica.com/contact-us.html
> 1.877.FLY.VIRGIN (877.359.8474)
>
> Have a lovely Sunday!
>
> If you have additional questions or concerns please let us know by
> responding to this email.
>
> Be Well,
> Madison
> Gilt Groupe

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Just prior to the New York Times story, which is really about how bad the culture at Zynga is, we had run our own story along the same lines.

There are some follow-up stories indicating that maybe the $2.25B was Rovio's asking price. Who knows at this point given that the spin-masters are back from Thanksgiving and are working hard on this.

If we were Rovio and its investors an offer at that level would be more than welcome. The best way that Rovio can grow is to itself try to buy other gaming companies. But its not clear that Rovio has that kind of management.

Usually, comments on the New York Times are not interesting but in this case they are, alternating between boosters and haters. One commenter claims he works there:

preplexedhuman New york
I work at zynga and i can attest to the terrible culture. Planning to quit once I can cash in the IPO. The hours are long and management is just simply bad. I have worked at google and I have several friends in facebook and they all seem to have better bosses and lesser workload. The perks you mentioned are pretty common throughout silicon valley, its really just all about the IPO.

Just in time for holiday shopping, China's Yingli Green Energy (YGE :NYSE) has teamed up with small business financing mogul CIT (CIT :NYSE) to offer financing for purchases and installations of solar panels from the its U.S. subsidiary, Yingli Americas.

Deals like this one are critical to the success of Yingli Green Energy. With the company's share price down over 70 percent in the last year, Yingli America is not in a position to offer financing to encourage sales and installations of its panels. But strategic financing may not help the company overcome concerns that the U.S. government will impose duties on imported solar panels from China.

And with Yingli lowering its guidance earlier in the month, investors are probably more interested in hearing the company announce utility-scale deals and the company's outlook for Q4 2011 and beyond. With the share price declining 64.5 percent since June 30, investors need stronger news if they hope to have a "Merry Christmas" owning this stock, or any other equity related to the solar industry.

Shares of Yingli were down 5.75 percent in midday trading.

The deal seems to be partially about getting Hunch CEO Chris Dixon who will open eBay's NYC office and manage eBay's 50 person recommendations team.

Hunch was founded in 2008 as a platform that recommended things it believed its users would like based on what they shared online. It uses machine learning, data mining and predictive modeling to make its suggestions.

Ryan Kim at Gigaom notes: "I think the purchase could improve eBay in a number of ways. For one thing, it could help the retailer better compete with Amazon and it keeps Hunch out of the hands of its rival, which has been well regarded for its ability to recommend products to users based on their purchase history and preferences. EBay launched its own recommendations last year to help suggest items based on past searches, but it clearly has a long way to go in matching Amazon, which moved ahead of eBay in sales last year. "

eConsultancy Blog notes: "As if it wasn't obvious when eBay tied up with Facebook to make social commerce a higher priority, this is even further proof of the company's investment in this area. eBay is looking to become more sophisticated in terms of its recommendation system, and is inching even closer to Amazon's model."

Hunch never found a large user base so the company seems to have thrown in the towel with a very nice payout given that the team has a strong pedigree.

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Today, an online travel vet JR Johnson announced his startup Trippy had raised $1.75M. The investment was co-led by Sequoia Capital and True Ventures with SV Angel and angels Rob Solomon, Tim Ferriss, Brian Lee, Gil Ebaz, Brandee Barker, Chase Jarvis, Randi Zuckerberg, singer Jason Mraz, and fashion designer Rachel Zoe.

CEO Johnson founded Virtual Tourist in 1999. It was an early travel community that was bought by OneTime which is now part of Tripadvisor. Johnson is also currently CEO of the dining review site Lunch.com.

The gist of Trippy is that Tripadvisor has too many strangers so Trippy will search on Facebook to see who you know who has been to a destination so you can ask their opinion for your travel planning.

Other funded sites in this space include Gogobot, Dopplr, Gtrot

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Most were surprised but all had a terrible impressions of the culture at Zynga. One engineer said that Zynga recruiting had been contacting him weekly for months but he said he would never consider working for Zynga. Why? Because his friends who work there say life at Zynga blows. They say the company has a fake culture where its clear they don't give a rat's ass about their employees. They spent a boat-load of money on their cafe and office to impress recruits but nobody is happy working there. There is the sense that employees just want to vest, sell their shares and get out pronto.

We have heard from others that CEO and founder Mark Pincus is both the reason that Zynga has flourished but is also the reason people hate working there. There is the sense that Pincus is foreover dangling shares and vesting in front of employees with a threat that they are just about to be fired and will lose their shares.

In our view this kind of company culture is not sustainable. It can get Zynga through to its IPO but after that Zynga could fall apart. The memo from Pincus to his staff that was run by Fortune illustrates that Pincus doesn't get how is company feels about him and the company. Hopefully, the company culture will be addressed at the board level. Talent wants to work where they will be appreciated and respected. They will leave Zynga leaving only workers with little self-esteem.

In April, Kobo closed $50M in financing aimed at helping it fund its international expansion. Kobo says it has more than 5.6M readers and is available to users of the iPad, iPhone, and BlackBerry, as well as Android devices and on Windows and Mac.

Indigo's CEO explained why the book-store agreed to sell Kobo: "Over the next year, this business will need in excess of $100 million to take it to where this industry is going, and we just cannot play in that league for that amount of capital."

Kobo says the company has a market share in the high single digits in the U.S. The company also provides e-readers for WH Smith bookstore in the UK, and is expanding internationally to France, Germany, Australia and New Zealand. They say that in each of those markets, they are launching with the top local players.

For Rakuten, they can open up Japan, Asia and other markets. So it seems like a great deal for them. For sure, it will be tough to compete with Amazon, Apple and others but the market is showing that they are open to other eReaders.

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Kaggle joins the crowd-sourcing field, and is focused on a niche that you would have to work in to get that crowdsourcing and competitions would apply.

Examples of the contests on Kaggle include:
+ A contest to predict patients who will be admitted to a hospital within the next year, using historical claims data. This contest is pretty active as it has over 1000 participants with a $3M grand prize.
+ A contest to improve credit scoring by predicting the probability that somebody will experience financial distress in the next two years. The prize here is just $5000.

Kaggle was founded by a couple of Aussis - Anthony Goldbloom and Jeremy Howard.

Kaggle charges the organizations that host competitions a fee and says it hopes to take a cut of the prize money. It plans to also host private competitions for companies that don't want to publicly post their data sets. Kaggle says they recruited elite participants and asked them to sign non-disclosure agreements to compete.

The New York Times got a nice quote from Kaggle: "The incomes of data scientists begin to look more like tennis or golf players or hedge fund managers, rather than sitting in the bowels of Allstate's actuarial team.". Kaggle ads that it now has 17K PhD level competitors.

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