Today, Mint, a very useful online personal finance web site, said it has closed a $12 million second round of funding led by Benchmark Capital. Seed investors First Round Capital and Series A lead investor Shasta Ventures must be pleased with the valuation rise in the latest round. It comes only six months after Mint's first round was announced. It would almost be more surprising not to see First Round in Mint since that firm is involved with so many promising consumer Internet startups. However, Shasta Ventures is a bit of a surprise. Mint must be the most promising company in that firm's portfolio.

Benchmark has done this before. It led mid-stage venture rounds into Yelp and Bebo after those companies had gained significant market traction. While Benchmark may have been the first institutional money into those companies, I don't consider them early stage investments because so much risk had been removed from the companies by that point in time.

And as anyone with a cursory knowledge of the industry knows, Benchmark is nothing like DAG Ventures, which specializes in investing in more mature startups that have previously received funding from Kleiner Perkins or Sequoia Capital. Benchmark has incubated and seeded a slew of companies such as Gaia Online and Zimbra that have gone on to raise large rounds or achieve big exits. 

But, what's equally impressive is that after the word is out about which startups actually are gaining the most traction in the market, Benchmark is able to swoop in and beat all other suitors. If it's doing it by leveraging its brand name rather than a willingness to pay up, it's even more impressive. - Joshua Jaffe