Average concertgoers go to two shows a year, and there’s a very good chance some of the money they spend on those shows goes to Ticketmaster, which dominates the ticketing business.

So here’s a company that wants a piece of that: TicketFly, a New York-based start-up that just raised a $2 million Series A round led by High Peaks Venture Partners and Contour Venture Partners. The company had previously raised $1 million in convertible debt last year, via angels Howard Lindzon and Roger Ehrenberg, among others.

If TicketFly works, there’s a good chance you won’t ever know about it, because it’s a B2B business: Consumers fund the operation via surcharges on their tickets, but the real customers are the concert venues, which strike exclusive deals with ticketing companies.

So most of the features are designed with the venues and promoters in mind. TicketFly says it can help with Web site design and management, promoting shows on Twitter and Facebook, tracking sales data in real time, etc.

All of this sounds like fairly straightforward stuff, but the ticketing business is an old, archaic one. And Ticketmaster, the industry’s eight million-pound gorilla, now owned by Live Nation (LYV), is particularly slow-moving when it comes to all things tech. So some of this really will feel fresh for the concert guys.

More interesting are TicketFly’s plans, which involve giving venues the chance to sell tickets using the same dynamic pricing/yield management techniques hotels and airlines use: That is, prices for hot shows may shoot up, and if you want to see a band no one else wants to see, you may end up paying very little.

TicketFly has about 50 venues signed up so far, and most are fairly intimate places like Maxwell’s in Hoboken, N.J., or the Triple Rock Social Club in Minneapolis–the kinds of of places where you could see Nirvana before Nirvana became Nirvana.

They’re also the kinds of places that used be served by TicketWeb, another Web-based upstart that Ticketmaster acquired a few years back. No coincidence: TicketFly co-founder Andrew Dreskin used to run that company.

Money is the grease of the business world, smoothing the way for things to happen. Without it, everything seizes up.

John R. Slocum has an idea — the FloodWatch, a sensor unit that mounts on a wall or ceiling and gives off an audible alarm when it detects a leak or floodwaters. What he and his Penfield startup company, FloodWatch LLC, need is about $800,000 to get to the point where it can begin selling units early next year.

Meanwhile, Bela Musits perhaps has the solution. The managing partner of High Peaks Venture Partners, an Albany-area venture capital firm, Musits is also venture-capitalist-in-residence at the University of Rochester and Rochester Institute of Technology. Once a month, he comes to UR and RIT and spends a few hours answering questions from university employees, students and local entrepreneurs about the ins and outs of raising cash for startup businesses.

“Nobody has money, that’s the unfortunate thing,” Slocum said, a prototype of the sensor unit on the desk in front of him as he sat in Musits’ borrowed office space at UR earlier this month.

Musits has no easy answers. FloodWatch is too young a company for High Peaks’ current fund. And the venture capital firm is busy trying to raise money itself for a new fund for early-stagecompanies, but that effort likely has months to go. The money-raising environment “is challenging, as you guys know certainly well,” Musits said.

High Peaks has invested $26 million in 13 companies around the state, including East Rochester telecommunications firm Allworx Corp., which was acquired in 2007 by PAETEC Holding Corp. Musits’ stint as venture-capitalist-in-residence started early this year. ”He was coming to Rochester on a monthly basis already,” said Duncan Moore, UR vice provost for entrepreneurship. “So we thought about making him available on a regular basis.”

And the fact that he’s willing to spend the time doing so could help attract other venture capitalists to the Rochester area, Moore said.

In meetings that typically last 30 to 60 minutes, Musits’ role is that of sounding board. ”I’ve had people come from ‘here’s my business plan, I’m looking to raise X amount of dollars’ to ‘gee, I’ve had this idea for five years, what’s the next step?’ and everything in between,” including direct requests for investment by High Peaks, Musits said.

Eric Leinberg and Sheree Savo, CEO and vice president of operations, respectively, of InfoPreserve, sat with Musits looking for insights on what possible investors want to see in terms of financial projections. The Rochester company, which specializes in digital preservation of data and documents, is looking to raise around $500,000.

“We’re about this close to product launch,” Leinberg said, holding his fingers closely together. “We’ve got beta customers. The core software is working but it’s not something I’d feel comfortable doing full sales yet. A couple more months, though.”

Musits is not the only source of advice. The area already has a variety of such sounding boards, he said, pointing to High Tech Rochester and the entrepreneurship programs at UR and RIT. “I’m just another stop along that path.” Musits previously was director of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s business incubator in the Albany area. ”I do this because I’ve had the good fortune of starting a few successful businesses and having worked at both IBM research and GE research,” he said.

“I want to share that. If something I pass on is important to somebody, that’s wonderful. I’m not in here just looking for investments.”

On the same day, Ticketfly also trumpeted  it’s arrival as a player with major venues, announcing that it had signed Merriweather Post Pavilion, the nation’s 3rd largest summer music pavilion and previously a key Ticketmaster client.  Read more about that announcement in Billboard Magazine.

Troy, NY – High Peaks Venture Partners announces its fourth annual New York Peak Pitch event to be held Friday, March 12th at Hunter Mountain.  Peak Pitch brings entrepreneurs and investors from across New York State together for a unique version of the classic “elevator pitch.” In the traditional elevator pitch, entrepreneurs take advantage of an unexpected opportunity to share an elevator ride with a potential investor and present their business idea.  At Peak Pitch, a shared chairlift ride is substituted for the elevator, giving entrepreneurs the opportunity to pitch their business plans to venture capitalists and other private investors as they ride up the mountain together.  Last year’s Peak Pitch was a great success, with more than 60 CEO’s and investors participating.

“Peak Pitch is a really unique event in that it offers investors and entrepreneurs a productive way to make a large number of connections in a fun and casual environment,” said Russ Howard, Managing Director at High Peaks Venture Partners. “Each year the attending CEO’s have been very pleased with the valuable connections they made and the advice they received from experienced investors.  The venture capitalists also get a lot out of the event by being able to quickly meet and review a variety of new deals that they otherwise might not have found,” added Howard.

Peak Pitch is a series of networking events organized by local Village Ventures affiliate funds to support entrepreneurial communities across New York, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.  Peak Pitch NY is hosted by High Peaks Venture Partners and sponsored by the law firms of Duane Morris, Nixon Peabody and Phillips Lytle and the insurance agency Parmele, McDermott, and Thomas.

More information and registration details on Peak Pitch ’10 are available at www.peakpitch.com or by contacting Christy Douglas at 518-720-3090 or christy@hpvp.com or Russ Howard at 518-720-3090 or russ@hpvp.com

Sponsors:

Soft Sight offers the world’s only on-demand custom embroidery and apparel embellishment solution. This offering is based on technology developed by founder David Goldman as part of his computer science PhD work at Binghamton University. Following HPVP’s investment in early 2008, the company launched the Threadsmith.com online custom embroidery business. Threadsmith’s patented technology enables rapid, real-time custom embroidery design and fulfillment. This process revolutionizes the custom apparel business, enabling quality, custom-embellished apparel & accessories to be designed and customized in real time and orders to be placed with no costly setup charges or lengthy processes.

Since HPVP’s investment in January of 2008, the company completed the deployment of this core technology to the web, opened a state-of-the-art production facility at their headquarters near Binghamton, NY, and built a world class development operation in India under the leadership of Technology Lead Nirav Patel. Through the second half of 2009, Threadsmith realized greater than 30% month-over-month revenue growth as the company’s powerful service rapidly penetrated the market. On the strength of this exceptional performance, the company received multiple, attractive offers for additional VC investment in Q4 2009. Ultimately, however, Vistaprint presented an acquisition offer that the Company’s board felt represented the best opportunity for shareholders.

“We are thrilled to realize a very successful outcome from our investment in Soft Sight,” said HPVP Managing Director Brad Svrluga. “It has been a unique pleasure working with David, Nirav and the entire Soft Sight team. It is always somewhat bittersweet to sell a high potential company so quickly – we were excited by the opportunity to continue building a powerful standalone business, but this opportunity, with this acquirer, is clearly the right deal at the right time. It’s a great achievement for the company, a wonderfully profitable outcome for us as investors, and we’re proud to have been a part of it.”

Founder and CEO David Goldman added, “This is a very exciting day for all Soft Sight shareholders. I’m thrilled to be moving on to this next stage in Threadsmith’s development. And I’m particularly grateful for the tremendous support that we have received from the High Peaks team over the past two years. Their commitment as investors went far beyond the check they wrote. They were a partner in the truest sense of the word, and a critical contributor to our success.”

The Threadsmith.com website will be closed for a few months during an integration process with Vistaprint’s operations, but Threadsmith’s service will relaunch later this year better than ever.

For questions please contact Brad Svrluga at brad@hpvp.com or 518-720-3090.

NEW YORK, September 29, 2009 – The NewsMarket (www.thenewsmarket.com), the innovative worldwide distributor of video marketing services, today announced the completion of the previously announced acquisition of Medialink Worldwide Incorporated (NASDAQ: MDLK), creating the global leader in the creation, execution and distribution of video-based marketing services. Investors in the privately held company include Softbank, Hearst Interactive Media, Battery Ventures, Apax Partners and High Peaks Ventures.

Jim Lonergan will remain as CEO & President of The NewsMarket, which will operate Medialink as a division of The NewsMarket.  The company will focus on seamlessly integrating staff and products while investing capital in an expanded sales force, client-branded distribution programs and proprietary technologies to unlock innovation in this market category.
“The merged companies’ complementary products and services provide us with the opportunity to offer the industry’s most comprehensive range of video-based services to our global client base,” said Mr. Lonergan.  “By integrating Medialink’s full range of end-to-end video-based services with our established proprietary platform of digital content, we will continue to grow and build market share while maintaining our leadership in the video marketing industry.”

Clients of The NewsMarket can now employ the award-winning video and audio production capabilities of Medialink.   Clients of Medialink gain the additional benefit of The NewsMarket’s global distribution to 25,000 media outlets in 190 countries and the ability to video-enable their own websites.

The news media will have more digital content from the combined companies – housed in one web-based digital platform – to develop news stories from additional newsmakers around the world.   As the content grows in both volume and global relevance, the value of the platform magnifies as the core resource for global media organizations.

Video is increasingly mainstream and the fastest-growing segment of marketing services as global customers transition their marketing budgets to video and distribution platforms. The end-user demand for video consumption on the web continues to break new records, now reaching 81% of online users with skyrocketing growth across all demographics.

Added Mr. Lonergan, “As the video market expands, clients require product innovations, superior content creativity and global reach for comprehensive video solutions.  The NewsMarket’s strategic approach supports increasingly sophisticated and targeted marketing programs for the current and future needs of international brands, private companies, governments, non-profits, public relations and investor relations agencies.”

About The NewsMarket
The NewsMarket is the global leader in the creation, production and distribution of video based marketing services used by brands, governments and NGOs to communicate with all their key audiences using video. The company’s media site (www.thenewsmarket.com) is used by more than 25,000 media outlets in 190 countries. Global brands, including General Motors, Volvo Cars, the U.S. Department of State, IBM, UNICEF, Facebook and Google use the NewsMarket’s proprietary technology to communicate with target audiences.

Medialink, a division of The NewsMarket, (www.medialink.com) produces and distributes news-oriented video and audio content, which is distributed on the Internet, television and radio. Medialink’s clients include well recognized public and private corporations, governmental and non-profit organizations, as well as public relations and investor relations agencies.

Investors in the privately held company include: Softbank, Hearst Interactive Media, Battery Ventures, Apax Partners, and High Peaks Ventures. Headquartered in New York, the merged company has offices in London, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Beijing, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, and San Francisco.

High Peaks Venture Partners’ portfolio company, Flat World Knowledge, the leading publisher of commercial open source college textbooks, today reported a dramatic increase in the number of colleges and classrooms adopting its textbooks. . This Fall semester, 38,000 college students at 350 colleges are enrolled to utilize Flat World textbooks, up from only 1,000 in Spring 2009 at 30 colleges.

The increased adoption of Flat World’s free and low-cost open source textbooks follows two semesters of successful in-classroom trials. During Spring 2009 trials, Flat World textbooks were shown to reduce average textbook costs to only $18 per student per class, an 82% cost reduction compared to traditional printed textbooks averaging $100 per student per class.

“We’ll save college students and their families nearly $3 million in textbook expenses this semester,” said Eric Frank, Flat World Knowledge co-founder. “We’re on track to expand to 50,000 students in Spring 2010 and 120,000 students in Fall 2010. By the conclusion of 2010, Flat World will have conservatively saved 200,000 students over $15 million.”

In response to instructor and student demand, Flat World Knowledge has increased the number of titles under development. To date, the company’s titles have focused exclusively on business and economics. Flat World recently added titles to its pipeline in Introduction to Psychology, Introduction to Sociology, College Success, Genetics, and more.

Flat World currently has 32 new titles in development, and by Summer 2010 will have 50 titles in development.

Digital textbooks have gained increased nationwide attention over the past two years as a potential solution to problem of high textbook costs. Yet, several digital-only field trials including those using digital e-reading devices such as the Amazon Kindle, have demonstrated mixed results because they forced rigid constraints upon students.

Flat World has succeeded by allowing students to consume the textbooks as they choose. Students can access entire textbooks for free online over Web browsers; pay $19.95 for a PDF download; pay $29.95 for a black and white printed version or $59.95 for a color version, or pay $39.95 for an audio version. Books are available by the book or by the chapter. Students can also purchase digital study aids like audio study guides, online quizzes, digital flashcards, and more. Flat World’s approach is device agnostic, so students can use the books on their laptops, netbooks, favorite e-reading devices, web-enabled mobile phone, or by reading a traditional print copy.

“Traditional textbooks have clearly failed students and instructors,” added Eric Frank. “Similarly, digital textbook trials that force a single format, device, or price point will also fail. No single ereading format or device will ever satisfy all students. “Our commercial open source textbook approach puts control and the power of choice in the hands of students and instructors.”

Read the full article at VentureBeat.  Additional coverage can be found at bNet and Wired

According to the firm, “the funding follows important milestones for TxVia, including successful large-scale client deployments of the company’s groundbreaking platform-as-a-service (PaaS) delivery model for prepaid card processing. Today, TxVia has more than five million reloadable and nonreloadable cards on file in both B2B and B2C prepaid applications.”

Read the full article by Payments News here.

NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwire – July 1, 2009) – The NewsMarket (www.thenewsmarket.com) today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement and plan of merger with Medialink Worldwide Incorporated (NASDAQ: MDLK).

The NewsMarket will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Medialink’s common stock at a price of $0.20 per share in cash. Once approved by Medialink’s shareholders, Medialink’s employees and services will be combined under The NewsMarket, Inc. This transaction combines The NewsMarket’s digital video distribution platform with Medialink’s professional services and production capabilities to create a complete video solution for corporate customers.

“Video continues to be the fastest growing category in marketing services, and the combination of The NewsMarket and Medialink will create a very compelling offering for all of our customers’ increasingly sophisticated demands,” said Jim Lonergan, CEO & President of The NewsMarket. “Merging Medialink’s strengths in strategy and execution with our technology creates the industry’s most complete video solution and enables us to be responsive to a larger share of the market.” The NewsMarket was launched in 2003 to capitalize on emerging digital distribution technologies to create the world’s preeminent video platform for the marketing, PR, and news media industries.

Medialink is a global leader in providing unique news and marketing media strategies and solutions that enable corporations and organizations to inform and educate their target audiences with maximum impact on television, radio and the Internet. Medialink offers creative services and multimedia distribution programs including video and audio news and short-form programming. For the 12 month period ending March 31, 2009, Medialink recorded revenues of $17.95 million.

By acquiring Medialink, The NewsMarket will significantly broaden its services to the marketing, communications, investor relations, and media community. “Video has gone mainstream and we’re seeing budgets increasingly shift toward the inclusion of video in all elements of mainstream communications and marketing. Customers want one trusted partner for their sophisticated video needs, and this acquisition positions us incredibly well to help customers from strategy, through production and distribution,” added Lonergan.

With this acquisition, The NewsMarket substantially increases its customer base, and thereby also exponentially grows its content archive. This large, varied and high quality archive is extremely relevant and valuable to the rapidly growing universe of media organizations, blogs, online outlets and consumer-facing video sites whose demand for content increases every day.

“We continue to see corporations – large and small – increasing their focus and expenditure on video as a core component of their marketing and communications strategies.  With the acquisition of Medialink, The NewsMarket will now bring truly end-to-end solutions to an expanded customer base.  The combined company will instantly be the clear leader in the industry, with the financial and management resources necessary to drive to even greater success,” said Brad Svrluga, Managing Director of High Peaks Venture Partners. Other investors in The NewsMarket include Hearst Interactive Media, Battery Ventures, Apax Partners, and Softbank.
The Board of Directors of Medialink has unanimously approved the transaction. It is anticipated to close this summer, subject to Medialink stockholder approval, regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.

About The NewsMarket

The NewsMarket is the leading platform used by global brands, governments and NGOs to communicate with all their key audiences using video. The NewsMarket combines award-winning, proprietary technology with a unique, strategic approach to support the marketing programs of the world’s leading brands including General Motors, Volvo Cars, the U.S. Department of State, IBM, UNICEF, Facebook and Google. The company’s media site (www.thenewsmarket.com) is used by more than 25,000 media outlets in 190 countries to view and order free news video. Headquartered in New York, the company also has offices in London, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Beijing and San Francisco. To learn more about us, visit: www.thenewsmarket.com/postingcontent.

The full article in The Business Review can be found here.