Deal Radar 2008: SKS Microfinance

Microfinance is slowly becoming a mainstream financial service category, and with the recent IPO of Mexican MFI, Compartamos, interest in the segment has been growing.

SKS Microfinance was launched in 1998 by Vikram Akula, who is now recognized by TIME Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. In the last ten years, the company has grown to include 700 branches in 15 states in India. The company has provided over $550 million in microcredit and has maintained outstanding loans of $223 million. >>>

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Deal Radar 2008: oDesk

Based in Menlo Park, CA, oDesk was founded by Odysseas Tsatalos and Stratis Karamanlakis in 2003. It is a platform that lets companies hire and manage remote workers from a global talent pool and pay them on an hourly or fixed rate basis. >>>

Deal Radar 2008: Elance

Elance is a marketplace which matches freelance design, technical, writing and other professionals with companies that need their services in a timely manner. The company was founded in 1999 by Beerud Sheth and is headquartered in Mountain View, California. >>>

Deal Radar 2008: Slide

Slide, founded in 2005, is Max Levchin’s second baby. Levchin, founder of PayPal, sold the online payment site to eBay for $1.5 billion, and he intends to do even better with his current venture, Slide. Slide, however, doesn’t look like a great second act to me! >>>

Deal Radar 2008: Yelp

Yelp is a popular site where users review trendy and not-so-trendy local businesses in their city. Yelp users can write reviews, read reviews, discuss topics and share their opinions and experiences with others on an endless list of topics such as restaurants, stores, hairstylists and real estate brokers. Started in 2004 in San Francisco, the site has expanded to cover cities in 37 states, with an aim to go international. >>>

Deal Radar 2008: TechCrunch

We all know TechCrunch, a popular blog, a web 2.0 phenomenon, that reviews and profiles Internet companies and products. Founded on June 11 2005 by Michael Arrington, it focuses on how various companies are impacting the web. In this post, we explore the details of Arrington’s ambition. >>>

Deal Radar 2008: GigaOM

Blogs have changed the face of the web dramatically over the last few years. GigaOm is a network of blogs published by GigaOmniMedia, Inc. You could read my interview with founder Om Malik here to get a flavor of how he pioneered blogging in the early years of the millennium. >>>

Deal Radar 2008: Federated Media Needs to Focus

I was recently at a dinner party where a venture capitalist asked me about Federated Media, and whether his firm should invest in the company. Federated, if you haven’t yet figured this out, is on the funding trail at the moment, trying to raise money. >>>

Deal Radar 2008: Glam Media’s Fashion Forays

Glam Media is a women-focused distributed media network that represents and packages content from over 400 sources including fashion blogs, websites and magazines. Along with Glam.com, its flagship, it brings together content relevant to women while giving advertisers an efficient access to fragmented inventory. It is one of the companies we covered earlier in Women & Web 3.0. >>>

Deal Radar 2008: Adify’s Market Taking Time to Develop

Adify is a vertical advertising platform co-founded by Russ Fradin with former Flycast co-founders, Larry Braitman and Richard Thompson. I interviewed Adify’s CEO, Russ Fradin in 2007. >>>

Deal Radar 2008: Seeking Alpha

I covered Seeking Alpha a while back. It is a one-stop shop for financial news and analysis.

Founded in early 2004 by David Jackson, it focuses on opinions, analysis and portfolio management tips from contributors, many of whom are finance professionals, Hedge Fund managers and newsletter authors. The incentive for most contributors is the exposure, similar to TheStreet.com. >>>

Deal Radar 2008: InsideView’s Clever Maneuvering

InsideView — headquartered in San Bruno, California, USA and operations in Cincinnati, Ohio and Hyderabad, India—was founded in 2005 by Umberto Milletti and Richard Horn. The company has been featured here before and you can read my interview with Umberto here. >>>

Deal Radar 2008: Lucidera

LucidEra, the on-demand business intelligence solution provider was founded in 2005 by Ken Rudin, John Sichi and Tai Tran. We had featured Ken Rudin, the CEO of LucidEra last year in an interview. >>>

Deal Radar 2008: Groople, Interesting Use of Context

Groople is an online group travel site, which helps with searching, planning and booking group travel. (Read my Interview with Groople CEO Mike Stacy) Groople is different from Expedia and Kayak in that it serves only group travelers, no individuals, and is thus a great focus on a specific “Context“. >>>

Deal Radar 2008: Adap.tv Trying to Tackle the Video Ad Problem

After the success of shopping.com (now owned by eBay), Amir Ashkenazi, stepped into the hairy world of video advertising through his recently founded Adap.tv in Nov 2006. It claims to provide publishers and advertisers the best tool to make video ads more effective without interrupting the streaming flow. [see interview: Cracking the Online Video Monetization Nut: Adap.tv CEO Amir Ashkenazi] >>>