Jolicloud has announced that they’ve received $4.2 million in funding. The company, which offers a new operating system for netbooks, received the funding from Atomico Ventures and Mangrove Capital Partners.

Image: Jolicloud Press Release

Led by CEO Tariq Krim, Netvibe’s founder, Jolicloud has already gotten recognition for its intriguing potential.

“Jolicloud is poised to significantly change the way we use computers,” said Michael Jackson, a general partner for Mangrove Capital Partners (not the King of Pop). “The company’s founder is one of those rare people who understands what it takes to build a product with mass appeal. The early prototypes are encouraging and we look forward to being part of an adventure which we hope will bring low cost computing with exceptional ease of use and high functionality to the millions of people who simply find existing products unexciting, expensive or difficult to use.”

Jolicloud hopes to make computing more inexpensive and give consumers a world-class operating system that doesn’t hog resources.

Said Krim: “Traditional operating systems find their roots in the late seventies and are built around software. But today, 90% of our computing life is on the Web. Jolicloud was built with Web users in mind. This is a project of passion. To make the largest impact, we decided to surround ourselves with people who have real experience in achieving large-scale disruption.”

Marc Andreessen is one of the most famous people in Silicon Valley. The 37-year-old is perhaps most well-known for co-authoring Netscape Navigator — the first widely used browser.

According to various reports, Andreessen is stepping into the world of venture capital. He has reportedly raised $300 million for his new venture capital fund. Andreessen and his partner, Ben Horowitz, supposedly could have gotten even more money but they decided to cap it at $300 million.

Considering the economy, that’s a lot of venture capital money to draw in. It’ll be interesting to see which companies the duo plans to invest in.

After Netscape was sold to AOL in 1999 for more than $4 billion, Andreessen kept up his entrepreneurial ways. He formed Loudcloud, which was eventually sold to Hewlett-Packard for more than $1.5 billion. His latest venture is Ning, which allows people to make their own social networks.

Andreessen already has invested in a number of companies including Twitter, Digg, Netvibes and Plazes. He’s also connected to other massive internet entities such as eBay and Facebook.

Marc Andreessen (Image: Flickr)

Ooma.com, an online startup that offers free home phone service, has reportedly received more than $18 million in additional funding. The grand total that the company has now received in funding is believed to be in excess of $61 million.

According to the Ooma.com website, once you purchase their device, you can plug it into a high-speed internet connection and you will be able to call anywhere in the United States for free. The quality is supposedly landline-like and has features such as voicemail, call waiting and caller ID.

While there are many other comparable services on the market, the reviews for the Ooma.com free home phone service have been very positive.

Recently, Ooma.com won the Innovation Award from the Technology Marketing Corporation and presented by Internet Telephony.

Said Richard Buchanan, Ooma.com’s chief marketing officer: “At ooma, we are committed to providing excellence and innovation within the IP communications industry through technologies that forever change the home phone experience. We are thrilled that the ooma Hub and Scout received the 2009 INTERNET TELEPHONY TMC Labs Innovation Award – as it validates our dedication to pioneering advanced technology like superior call quality and reliability, unique telephony and networking features, all at a significant cost savings to consumers.”

It’ll be interesting to keep an eye on this startup and see if they can get a significant portion of the lucrative free home phone market.

Ooma (Image: Ooma.com)

Jobvana.com, a social networking marketplace for small businesses, service providers and individuals, has received further funding for an unspecified amount. The funding comes courtesy of Hawkeye Investments LLC, Rally Capital LLC and angel investors in Seattle, Washington.

Jobvana.com (Image: Jobvana)

The startup said they will use this funding to help launch their national marketing efforts and to speed up the production of their website development.

While Hawkeye Investments LLC had previously provided funding, Rally Capital LLC is new to the mix.

Said Nathan Casey, the President of Jobvana.com: “It’s tremendous to add a partner like Rally Capital. Dennis Weibling and his team have a proven track record of growing successful companies.”

Jobvanna.com boasts more than 30,000 businesses that are using their service. According to the company, their traffic increase has been rapid in recent months.

Said Weibling of Rally Capital LLC: “We were excited about Jobvana’s growth in this type of environment, and their ability to mold their product to the customers’ needs. Every time we looked at Jobvana we saw great leaps forward, in terms of product development, and a user base that was excited to grow and evolve with the site.”

23andMe.com received more than $2.5 million in a recent investment from Google. Considering that 23andMe.com is co-founded by Anne Wojcicki and she’s married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin — this can’t really be shocking news.

A startup based in Mountain View (just like Google), 23andMe.com is a very interesting biotechnology company. It’s slogan is “genetics just got personal”.

For $399, you will receive personalized genetic information. Once you order the $399 kit, you’ll soon receive it in the mail. Then you spit into the provided tube and send it back. At the lab, they’ll analyze your idea. Four-to-six weeks later, you go back to 23andMe.com and you can explore your genome.

By exploring your genome, you can view traits that may affect your health. You can also get information on your ancestry. There are also a lot of Web 2.0 features that allow you to interact with 23andMe.com and the rest of the community.

Overall, this is an online startup to definitely keep an eye on. With Google behind it, a very interesting (yet simple) business model and the latest social technology, 23andMe.com could quickly become a popular service.

23andMe.com (Image: 23andMe.com Screen Cap)

While the money for startup companies isn’t as easy to get as it was a few years ago, the money is still out there. If you have a good idea, you can get startup financing. For further proof, consider Clovis Oncology.

Clovis Oncology is a startup company that plans to acquire, develop and market promising anti-cancer compounds and agents. The company, which hopes to eventually have a global reach, raised $145 million in startup financing.

Said Clovis Oncology CEO Patrick J. Mahaffy: “At the same time that the discovery capabilities in biotech and pharma companies have yielded a large number of promising early stage anti-cancer compounds, the combination of more limited development capacity and increasing financial constraints reduces the opportunity to bring many of these compounds through clinical development and to market. Clovis is focused on partnering with these discovery-based companies and taking responsibility for developing and commercializing innovative products that may ultimately provide significant benefit to cancer patients.”

The investors who provided the $145 million of startup financing include New Enterprise Associates, Domain Associates, Aberdare Ventures, Versant Ventures, ProQuest Investments and Frazier Healthcare Ventures.

Clovis Oncology - Startup Financing

A lot of startups believe that the more funding you can get, the better. It’s not uncommon for startups to go after millions of dollars (if not tens of millions) in hopes of creating a successful startup company.

However, those experienced in the startup world will tell you funding is not always healthy for a startup. Here are four reasons to think twice:

1) Wasted Energy
Getting funding for a startup company is a whole lot of work. Sometimes, that effort could be better utilized by the startup itself.

2) Too Many Chiefs
Once you get funding, you’ll have a lot of people with hands on the steering wheel. That can slow down the company’s mobility.

3) Loss of Power
If you get funding, chances are that your power as the founder of a startup business will be partly, if not totally, lost.

4) Customers Lost in the Shuffle
Many startups with a lot of funding find that they are working to make the investors happy rather than making their customers happy.

Remember: Funding has Strings Attached (Image: Flickr)

Husk Insulation, a startup company, has been named the winner of the MIT Clean Energy Prize. Along with the recognition is a check for $200,000. The MIT Clean Energy Prize is a national student competition that was founded by the United States Department of Energy, NSTAR and MIT to highlight clean energy startups.

The product produced by Husk Insulation is a patented type of insulation that is made from plant-based agricultural waste. The insulation is reportedly ten times more effective than conventional insulation. While this product could be used in many areas, the company will first target the refrigeration industry. According to their calculations, their Husk Insulation product should be able to improve efficiency by as much as 50%.

“Our mission is to increase energy efficiency through high-performance insulation, said Ian Dailey, Husk Insulation’s President. “Winning this substantial prize enables us to more effectively promote our product to manufacturers so they can design more efficient refrigerators, which can reduce our nation’s electricity use and carbon emissions.”

New Refrigerator Insulation is Heading Your Way (Image: Flickr)

In their Series C financing, Cempra Pharmaceuticals was able to raise $46 million in funding. Cempra Pharmaceuticals is a startup company that is creating antibiotics for drug-resistant and difficult to treat infections. The company says that this series of funding will go toward more clinical development.

Said Cempra Pharmaceuticals President and CEO Prabhavathi Fernandes, Ph.D.: “This additional funding represents strong confidence in our approach to address the need for new antibiotics, particularly those that will be used to treat drug-resistant infections, and it will help us advance our clinical development of these very promising compounds. The Infectious Disease Society of America has cited that the top three needs in antibacterials are treatments for multi-drug resistant pneumococcus, MRSA, and gram negative pathogens. With CEM-101 potentially indicated for community-acquired bacterial pneumonia, and CEM-102 being developed for complicated skin infections, including MRSA, we are making great strides to address two of those three needs.”

In the startup world, many companies in the healthcare field continue to get financial support — even in these difficult economic times. With worldwide healthcare a trillion dollar industry, any type of medical breakthrough could save millions of lives and be worth billions of dollar.

Cempra.com Screen Shot

EveryZing.com is an interesting startup with a lot of potential. Like many internet startups, search is a key component. However, while most search engines focus on the written word, EveryZing.com helps companies make their audio and video content searchable.

The potential of EveryZing was recently furthered by the announcement of an agreement with NBC Universal and the unveiling of more than $8 million in funding.

According to Tom Wilde, the CEO of EveryZing, this field is growing quickly.

Said Wilde: “The consumption and demand for online video continues to explode. As such, media companies must continue to fully leverage their unique content assets in order to extend and enhance their business models. We are thrilled with this opportunity to have NBCU as a customer and Peacock as an investor.”

“EveryZing’s core technology advantage and robust product offerings will assist us in taking full advantage of the content across many NBCU brands,” said Scott Drake, the VP of CNBC Digital, “ultimately enhancing the audience experience.”

We’ll try to setup an interview with someone from EveryZing.com here at StartupSpark to try to learn more about their startup process.

EveryZing.com Screen Shot