8 Tech Companies That Announced Funding Today: Which is Most Likely to Change the World?

We’re highlighting eight diverse companies that announced venture capital investments today. Investors have made a wager on each of these companies, but the odds are only so good for the group. We want to know, readers, which one do you think is most likely to prove viable and change the world? We’ve got a photo-based social networking site (looks like another fun means of communication), a question and answer site where different folks from programmers to home cooks can get their questions answered, a web-based advertising platform and five more promising companies to pay attention to. We also reveal who interested you voted the most interesting out of yesterday’s line up.

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Yesterday’s poll winner was HubSpot, which raised $32m. HubSpot makes marketing software geared for small and medium-sized businesses and it earned 39% of RWW readers’ vote.

Today’s Companies:

StumbleUpon, the popular discovery engine that recommends the best sites for interests that the user specifies, raised $17m in a Series B round of financing. Tier 3, a cloud-computing service based in Seattle, raised $8.5m.

DailyBooth is a photo-based social networking site, which enables users to capture images of themselves and upload them daily in a process known as, “boothing.” It raised $6m in its first round of funding. Stack Exchange recently changed its name from Stack Overflow and raised $12m in a Series B round of of funding. Stack Exchange is a network of 46 question and answer sites, covering a wide breadth of topics. For example, I explored the cooking forum and learned about how to prevent my homemade soup from sticking to the bottom of my pot.

Flite (formerly Widgetbox) is a web-based advertising platform that raised $12m in Series C investments. Grid2Home, a smart grid software developer based in San Diego, raised $12m according to an SEC filing.

Startup Digest, a members-only email service that lists the best startup opportunities and happenings in 50+ cities raised $200,000 in funding from the Kauffman Foundation. MindSnacks makes learning games for touch-based devices and it raised $1.2m from an assortment of investors. Their focus is on short, “bite-sized,” interactive language learning experiences.

Again, we’ve got eight very different companies raising funding, which do you think could take that money and change the world?