Personal motivational mobile app Lift has closed a Series A round of funding led by Bijan Sabet at Spark Capital. Also, earlier this year the business extended its seed investment from Obvious to include three angels.

Entrepreneurs get absorbed into big companies every day when their startups are acquired. When they eventually leave, as so many do, the smart ones exit gracefully. You can put Tobias Peggs in that camp; here’s why.

FundersClub, a marketplace for private investing, has closed a significant round of seed funding. Investors in the round included First Round Capital, Y Combinator, Draper Associates, Felicis Ventures, Spark Capital, Digital Garage, Intel Capital, Y Combinator-affiliated funds (Andreessen Horowitz, Start Fund, SV Angel, and General Catalyst Partners), Investmon Sarl, NetPrice, Global Venture Alliance and Plug and Play Tech Center.

Aviary said it closed a $6 million round of funding from Spark Capital, Bezos Expeditions, and unidentified strategic investors. The New York company, which is developing a photo editing platform, said the platform is used by 8 million people, who have edited 100 million photos in the past 30 days. PRESS RELEASE Aviary’s usage skyrockets, [...]

Group Commerce Inc. said it raised a $21 million Series C round of funding from Jafco Ventures and existing investors Spark Capital, Carmel Ventures, and others. The funding will be used for technology development and to expand in the U.K., Germany and other European countries. PRESS RELEASE Group Commerce Receives $21 Million for Product Development [...]

Venture capital returns have begun to recover with exits from companies such as LinkedIn, Zynga, Jive Software and Imperva fueling liquidity. Funds from 2007 and 2008 are good examples of the renewal.

Tumblr President John Maloney announced today that he is no longer run the day-to-day operations of the company, which has raised more than $125 million in VC from from Greylock Partners, Insight Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures.

Investment network eToro has closed a funding round of $15 million from Spark Capital and other investors. The funding will help fuel international growth and continue to evolve eToro’s social trading platform. PRESS RELEASE eToro, the world’s largest investment network, announced today that it has closed a funding round of 15 million US dollars from [...]

Mo Koyfman, who has been with Spark Capital since 2008, has been promoted to general partner. He will be based in the firm’s New York office. Since joining Spark, Koyfman has worked on deals including Skillshare, Work Market, Svpply, gdgt, and Aviary.

New York-based Timehop has closed a seed round of $1.1 million. The investment was led by Bryce Roberts of OATV (O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures) which focuses on seed and early stage investments among technology early adopters. Also in the round is Spark Capital represented by Andrew Parker. Several angel investors also participated in the round including [...]