FiscalNote gets funded by Chinese Facebook [Startup Roundup]

WHO’S GETTING FUNDED?

D.C.-based FiscalNote, a software company that exploits open data resources, raised a $10 million Series B, it announced on its site. The Chinese social networking site RenRen is leading the deal.

WHO’S GETTING BUZZ?

FedBid, an online marketplace for government contracts, has been declared “ineligible” by the goverment due to a “a lack of business integrity,” after it had tried to discredit a Veterans Affairs official who opposed its use by the agency. The Washington Times has the story.
LivingSocial earned a net profit, and cut its end-of-year losses in 2014, it announced in preliminary earnings information posted on its site. Here’s more analysis from the Washington Business Journal and the Washington Post.
And yet — LivingSocial and TrackMaven received a shoutout in CNBC’s list of “Five US tech hubs you probably didn’t know about,” which included, no joke, Washington, D.C.
PopVox cofounder Rachna Choudhry, Disruption Corporation founder Paul Singh and Silica Labs cofounder Stephanie Nguyen, as well as Steve Taylor, the principal software engineer at cybersecurity company Invincea, were profiled in the February issue of Washington Life Magazine.
The local incubator 1776 was featured in Business Insider: “[Y]ou won’t find any benign photo sharing apps in 1776’s portfolio.”

WHO’S GETTING THEIR MUG ON TV?

Fundrise’s plan to sell tax-free bonds of 3 World Trace center on its real-estate crowdfunding platform made quite some noise in New York and the national media. Cofounder Daniel Miller explained in an interview for BloombergBusiness, “We wanted to make this available to everybody for as little as 5,000 bucks.”
The Iron Yard, whose coding classes launched in January in Crystal City, made it on FOX5 news.
Fosterly founder Adam Zuckerman was invited on CNBC to discuss Aspiro, Jay Z’s recent foray into music streaming.