San Francisco-based SaveUp has raised $2 million in seed financing to help Americans save more money. The company is developing a national rewards program for personal savings, where users win promotions and prizes by paying down their debts and bulking up their savings. BlueRun Ventures and True Ventures are backing the company. SaveUp is currently gearing up for a private beta test of its service.

Kabbage, Inc. said it secured $17 million of Series B funding in a deal led by Mohr Davidow Ventures. Existing investors BlueRun Ventures; David Bonderman, founder of TPG Capital; Warren Stephens, chief executive of Stephens Inc.; and the UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund participated in the round. Also part of the round were several individuals, including [...]

Start-up Opinionaided has closed on $4.3 million from SoftBank Capital, BlueRun Ventures, General Catalyst and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, as well as from angel investors, including DreamIt Ventures’ Mark Wachen and Jonah Goodhart of Point Ventures Group. Opinionaided is a free question-and-answer app, downloadable on the iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, which gives advice and opinions in real-time. With the Series A round, the company also announced the formation of a board, which includes investors Jay Jamison, a venture partner at BlueRun Ventures; and Joe Medved, a partner at SoftBank Capital. Softbank and BlueRun were the lead investors on the Series A round.

SiliconBlue Technologies has closed on $18 million in Series D financing. Atlantic Bridge, a Dublin and London-based private equity firm, led the financing. Existing shareholders BlueRun Ventures, Crosslink Capital, NEA and Apex Venture Partners all participated in the round. Brian Long, a partner at Atlantic Bridge, will join the company’s board. SiliconBlue develops custom mobile device technology for handheld applications. The company is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., with offices in China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan.

Pixim, the Mountain View, Calif.-based startup providing technology for security cameras, will buy Advasense Technologies. Investors in Pixim include Tallwood Venture Capital, Ridgewood Capital, Mayfield Fund and Mohr Davidow. Advasense Technologies investors include Genesis Partners, Giza Venture Capital, CIDC Consultants, BlueRun Ventures and VentureTech Alliance. Specifics on the transaction were not publicized.

Chances are good that with Easter Sunday approaching and Memorial Day just around the corner, you’ve recently typed into your URL a food website so you can look up a special recipe or a BBQ technique. It’s too soon to tell whether investing in the social food category is a recipe for success, but the sector [...]

BlueRun Ventures, Ignition Partners, Founders Fund and angel investor Scott Banister (co-founder of Zivity) joined a $15 million Series C round for Topsy, the San Francisco-based company announced today. Western Technology Investments joined the round, which brings to $30 million the amount of equity and debt that Topsy, a provider of real-time search engine services, [...]

What does the United States have that Europe doesn’t? For Peter Arvai, co-founder and CEO of Prezi, a developer of an online presentation tool that was founded in Hungary, the answer has to do with critical mass. The United States has the market and the access to capital, Arvai writes in the upcoming issue of [...]

Coupa Software said Tuesday it closed a $12 million Series D round of financing in a deal led by Mohr Davidow Ventures and joined by existing investors El Dorado Ventures, Battery Ventures, and BlueRun Ventures. MDV General Partner Bryan Stolle will join the board of the San Mateo, Calif, based provider of spending management software. [...]

During the month of December, the typical venture capitalist can expect at least a few nagging requests from journalists about predictions for the coming year. Often, it seems like a losing game. Make a prediction that’s too obvious–such as “enterprise cloud adoption will continue to escalate”–and it bores. Get specific–i.e. Groupon will IPO for a [...]