Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Village Ventures funds TopTenREVIEWS website

By Mass High Tech Staff

Williamstown venture capital firm Village Ventures has partnered with Boise, Idaho-based Highway 12 Ventures to help fund the expansion of Utah-based TopTenREVIEWS, a consumer-related review site for electronics, software and entertainment products and services.

The two firms ponied up $6 million in funding for the company, which executives say could be used to staff up to 100 new jobs in the next 18 months. The angel firms were introduced to TopTenREVIEWS through Utah’s Fund of Funds, a state economic development program.

Originally founded as eCatapult Inc., TopTenREVIEWS aims to change the way consumers shop for technology and entertainment products and services by providing accurate and unbiased reviews from end users. According to company documents, TopTenREVIEWS boasts four million web pages of content in more than 225 categories.

The company was originally self-funded, and the new funding is the company’s first institutional financing.

Focused on early-stage companies, Village Ventures has been active in the consumer market, backing a number of different kinds of companies from Narragansett Brewing Co. and Vermont Teddy Bear to Indianapolis-based video production technology company Cine-tal Systems Inc. and New York-based group collaboration site kluster.com.