Field Service Software Developer ServiceMax Raises $71M From Kleiner Perkins, Meritech Capital

Startup ServiceMax, a company that develops field service software, has raised $71 million in Series E funding led by Meritech Capital and Kleiner Perkins with Cross Creek Advisors, QuestMark Partners, and Sozo Ventures participating. Existing investors that are following on are Emergence Capital Partners, Mayfield Fund, Trinity Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Adams Street Partners, and Salesforce.com. To date, ServiceMax has raised $120 million.

ServiceMax essentially helps manage other company’s equipment at their sites. ServiceMax software automates workforce optimization, advanced scheduling and dispatch, parts logistics, inventory and depot repair, and installed base entitlements. It helps companies who install, repair, and maintain the machines in homes, offices, and hospitals.

For example, if a technician has to fix a radiation machine at a hospital, using ServiceMax, the repair person has the customer’s history available, and knows why the machine signaled it needed repair. If the technician runs into trouble he or she can use ServiceMax’s social feature to ask for help from any of the company’s global techs and if needed, could show the specific problem to someone else over FaceTime.

The company software is used by more than 300 customers across the globe including Kodak Alaris, Coca-Cola, and Arjo Huntleigh. Industries range from oil and gas and medical device to telecommunication and utilities.

ServiceMax says it has seen triple digit growth in the past year in revenue, and bookings. And the company added more than 100 customers last year alone.

So why is ServiceMax seeing growth now? The company says the installation, maintenance, and repair sector (field service) is growing rapidly– one in ten jobs created last year was in the field service industry. The field service software industry is estimated to be a $15 billion market with more than 5 million field techs in the U.S. and tens of millions more across the globe. The expansion of mobile in the sector and the ability for field techs to use devices like tablets and the iPad have also created new opportunities.

We’re told the new financing will be used to scale product, global expansion, and sales.

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App.net Launches Backer, A Bitcoin-Friendly Crowdfunding Engine For Individual Software Features

As the popularity of crowdfunding grows ever larger, an interesting new trend has started popping up: developers, curious if a new feature is worth adding to their products, are asking interested customers to chip in to cover the costs of development. In other words: if you really want a feature, put your money where your mouth is.

Balanced, a payment service, recently used crowdfunding to support adding a new money sending feature. App.net, a subscription-based/ad-free Twitter alternative which as a whole was born out of a $803,000 crowdfunding campaign, is currently using it to determine if they’ll accept Bitcoin payments on their site.

This morning, App.net announced that they’re opening up the engine they built for their Bitcoin campaign, allowing other companies to use the platform to raise money for individual features. They’re calling the new platform Backer.

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Google's Picasa software backs up photos from PCs to Google+

Auto Backup offers to transfer photos from Mac and Windows machines running Picasa software to Google's social service.

(Credit:screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

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Tesla Model S software update guards against faulty wiring

Amidst a recent spate of Model S fires, Tesla has upgraded the software on the EV to prevent unsafe charging, according to a tweet from Tesla S owner

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Roku player software cracked open temporarily, root now to run XBMC later

Roku's line of set-top boxes have been popular thanks to their simple controls, large set of available apps (recently expanded to include YouTube for the new Roku 3) and hardware ranging in price from inexpensive to downright cheap. Still, despite an active and encouraged developer community with custom channels and well-supported media player apps like Plex, the hardware has remained largely on lockdown -- until now. The GTVHacker team that previously unlocked Google TV and Chromecast has found a way to run its commands as root on any Roku 2 or Roku 3 using the most recent software version (unfortunately, that does not at this time include Sky TV's cheap Now TV player, which runs on older software). While the player overall is credited as "considerably more secure than others in the entertainment field" (Samsung comes to mind but it's from from the only one) a development password field provided a way in.

Currently they've only achieved persistence on the Roku 2, which in this case means they can maintain control even after the box reboots by breaking the secure boot process and modifying the initial boot loader. Since Roku 2 runs on the same Broadcom chip used by the popular Raspberry Pi, team member CJ Heres expects to see ports for third-party home theater PC software like XBMC very quickly. The Roku 3 will be a bit trickier since it runs on different hardware, and right now it needs to have the command entered each time the box starts.

Those well-versed in using the command line should find the process simple. A WGET command entered via the development password field pulls down a script -- available from the GTVHacker team -- that makes sure you have the right box and does all the dirty work before rebooting, leaving you with a rooted box, as seen above. Hardware level access on mobile platforms has lead to a number of custom software projects and we'll have to see if the same path is followed here, but if all this does is create a simple $40 XBMC box, it's probably still worth looking into -- and quickly, the team expects this security hole will be patched soon.

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Ask A VC: Accel’s Ping Li On The Impact Of Data-Driven Software and More

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In this week’s episode of Ask A VC, Accel Partners’ Partner Ping Li joined me in the studio to talk about big data companies, enterprise IPOs and more.

Li, who focuses on early-stage growth software and data-center investments for Accel and is also responsible for the firm’s Big Data Fund, talked about the impact that data driven software has had on how entrepreneurs. He also explained where he sees new areas of innovation in the large-scale data analysis space.

Check out the video above for more!

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ChallengePost Will Soon Support Software Innovation On An Ongoing Basis Outside Of Contests

Hackathon and online technology challenge contest provider ChallengePost (disclosure: ChallengePost is the current service provider for TC Disrupt hackathon events) is pretty proud of its 2013 – the company awarded $7.5 million in prizes to developers and software creators this past year, topped 400,000 registered users on its platform, and hosted 130 hackathons and online competitions. That represents 100 percent growth in business compared to 2012, but already the company is turning its attention to something new: supporting the kind of innovation that happens within a confined time frame at hackathons, but on a continuing basis.

“The future of every industry is a battle to create an ecosystem that has a platform for developers, and the developers and designers themselves,” ChallengePost founder and CEO Brandon Kessler explained in an interview. “That to me is a hugely important aspect of the future and it’s already coming true, and ChallengePost sees ourself as the only platform that excels at developer marketing.”

Currently, ChallengePost powers both the kind of 24-hour in-person hackathon that we host at our Disrupt Events, as well as longer format online events they call “challenges” that could span weeks, and that generally produce much more polished and usable software. Embark, the transit app acquired by Apple earlier this year, was first built at a ChallengePost online challenge event, for example, as was Movil, the video startup acquired by Samsung to boost its smart TV platform.

“The thing I am most focused on is allowing software makers to submit their software outside of a challenge, as well as inside of a challenge, so developers can showcase their work any time,” Kessler said. “In order to best inspire developers to build and showcase software, we want to do it beyond just challenges and hackathons and allow them to do it any time. The time-constrained nature of challenges has limited our ability to respond to the intense demand to showcase software.”

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