Betting on Snacks, Software and Social Networking

Snikiddy Snacks

Mary Schulman left the world of investment banking three years ago to found Snikiddy Snacks with her mother, Janet Owings. The Bethesda company makes snacks for children using organic and natural ingredients such as unrefined sugar, oats and whole wheat flour. Its six product lines, including Chocolate Chippers and Pizza Pie Puffs, are carried in grocers including Whole Foods, Wegmans and Giant.

Inspiration came during Schulman's first pregnancy, when she noticed that there were few organic snacks for children. Having grown up eating food that was organic and locally grown, she and her siblings developed a reputation in school for being "persnickety" or, in kid-speak, "snikiddy."

The $15 million worth of capital from New York-based D.E. Shaw Group the company received last quarter will be used in part to try to build its brand, said Schulman, 33. The organic food snack segment is a fast-growing market, and the company sees itself competing against other organic snacks such as Annie's Homegrown and Robert's American Gourmet, as well as big, traditional snack companies such as Kellogg's, which recently bought the Bear Naked granola company.

Fishbowl Marketing

Fishbowl Marketing, an Alexandria company that creates and manages e-mail marketing campaigns for the restaurant industry, last month received an $11.9 million investment from Valhalla Partners and Edison Venture Fund.

The company manages databases of customer e-mails for restaurants -- chains and smaller eateries -- and helps design advertisements for promotions, sweepstakes, and customers' anniversaries and birthdays. Fishbowl Marketing will use the money to develop services, such as marketing to mobile phones and a service that will allow restaurants to offer online ordering and reservations, said Chief Financial Officer Mike Skoff.

Founded in 2000 by Scott Shaw, who was a founder of the local Austin Grill restaurant chain, Fishbowl Marketing is named after the glass containers restaurants put out for patrons to leave their business cards.

The company manages the accounts of more than 800 restaurants, with 28,000 locations and 26 million e-mail addresses. Fishbowl competes against both Massachusetts-based Constant Contact and Indianapolis-based ExactTarget, which offer e-mail marketing to a variety of businesses, including restaurants. With consumers increasingly watching their spending, it is a difficult time for the restaurant industry, Skoff said.

"The industry is under pressure, and we believe that it is in times like this that the restaurant industry needs services like ours more than ever," Skoff said.

SnagAJob.com

SnagAJob.com, based just outside Richmond, specializes in helping people find pizza delivery jobs, retail jobs, summer jobs, seasonal jobs and more.

Shawn Boyer, a former transaction lawyer (and former lawn mower and retail employee), founded the company in 1999 after he had trouble finding useful resources online when searching for an internship for a friend. The company lists openings for part-time and hourly jobs, charging a fee to employers and allowing job-hunters to search for free. SnagAJob says only 18 percent of the traffic on its site overlaps with that on major career sites such as Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com.

The firm started with two employees in a 1,000-square-foot office space in a medical office park. It now employs 110 full-time workers in what the company describes as a "funky 35,000-square-foot Silicon Valley-like complex overlooking a lake in Richmond."

The company received a $5 million investment toward expansion last quarter from Adams Street Partners, Baird Venture Partners and C&B Capital.