Matchbin has closed a $10 million equity financing round from investors including Level Equity, Greycroft Partners and vSpring Capital. Simultaneously with the financing, the company announced the acquisition of NAVTEQ Media Solution’s Radio and Television Group, and the closing a $12 million credit facility with Silicon Valley Bank. The combined company, which will now be [...]

Level Growth Equity Partners I, the fund from New York-based investor Level Equity, has raised $130 million from investors including corporations, endowments, funds of funds and entrepreneurs. Level Equity also announced Glen Shields as the fund’s Controller, and the addition of Christopher Isaac and Joseph McGroarty to the firm’s investment team.

As I recall it, the used textbook process in your average college town went something like this, once upon a time: take something you paid approximately $120 for, re-highlight selected passages of it and (hopefully) consume about three-quarters or more of its contents, then head off campus to a kindly hippie in a patchouli-scented bookstore [...]

CampusBookRentals.com, a Utah-based provider of online textbook rentals, has raised $20 million from investors including Level Equity, Five Elms Capital and Cherokee & Walker. The combined equity and debt financing will be used for growth.

If you want to raise your first VC fund, you’re probably better off not being in Silicon Valley. That’s one of the takeaways of peHUB’s analysis of fundraising data from Thomson Reuters (publisher of peHUB). Of the dozen first-time funds that raised capital in the second quarter, 10 are based outside of California. Most (four) [...]

It’s like a jungle sometimes,
It makes me wonder
How I keep from going under.
–Grandmaster Flash

Raising a venture fund is proving to be increasingly difficult. As my colleague Connie Loizos reported on Monday a paltry 37 VC funds were raised in the second quarter. That was the smallest quarterly number in 16 years.

But, as evidenced by funds raised in Q2, you can still raise capital if you can show LPs a track record of returns or offer a differentiated strategy. Of the 10 funds that raised the most capital in the second quarter, four are focused on China and India, markets that have produced big exits in the past couple of years; three are follow-on vehicles for successful funds; one is a new fund raised by VCs with solid track records; one targets the booming market for Android-based applications; and one buys distressed VC portfolios on the secondary market, where there are still plenty of deals to be had.

Catch up on what your colleagues found most interesting on peHUB this week. Posts that garnered the most pageviews from regular readers from May 30 to June 3 focused on venture returns at UTIMCO; insiders who cashed out before Groupon’s IPO; Level Equity raising its first fund; Sequoia Capital backing a chain of grilled cheese shops; and more.

1. Slideshow: UTIMCO’s Top 5 Venture Capital Investments, by Mark Boslet

2. Slideshow: Top 10 Winners in pre-IPO Cash-Out at Groupon, by Lawrence Aragon

3. Backers of Biggest Groupon Round Not Among Top Shareholders, by Joanna Glasner

4. Former Insight GPs Raise $120M for New Firm, Level Equity, by Lawrence Aragon

5. Job Moves: Vivo Promotes Two, TA Goes to Hong Kong, Obama Appointee Joins Venrock, More, by Joanna Glasner

6. Sequoia Flips Over Kaplan’s Grilled Cheese, by Sarah McBride, Reuters

7. Fundless Sponsor Sponsor Plots Fund IV, by Bernard Vaughan

8. It’s Baaack: Wine.com Shopping for $10M to $15M — Exclusive, by Connie Loizos

9. So, Um, What’s Up with DLA Piper?, by Connie Loizos

10. Another Argument For Back-ended Carry Distributions?, by David Toll

Nearly three years after splitting off from Insight Venture Partners, Benjamin Levin and George McCulloch have raised $120 million for what appears to be their first fund, according to a May 31 regulatory filing. Levin and McCulloch, who were previously partners at Insight, are listed in the regulatory filing as co-CEOs of Level Equity Partners. [...]

Insight Venture Partners is one of the VC world’s darlings right now, having taken two portfolio companies public in the past month. But peHUB has learned that a partner on one of those investments, George McCulloch, has left the firm to hang his own shingle. Joining him are fellow Insight managing director Ben Levin and senior associate Sarah Haas.

The new firm is called Level Equity, and is based in New York City. No word yet on firm strategy, although both McCulloch and Levin have historically focused on the IT sector. Prior to joining Insight in 2002, MCulloch worked on growth equity deals for Summit Partners in software, semiconductor and communications companies, while Levin concentrated on data networking deals for Greenwich Technology Partners.

“They are good, talented guys who saw an opportunity to scratch their entrepreneurial itch,” says Jeff Horing, a co-founder