Two friends’ companies announced funding today:

FlowPlay: Raised $3.7m in a first round for their casual games company. Christian Oestlien is a co-founder and colleague of mine at Google.

Howcast: How-to video site raised $8m — congrats to Jason, Daniel and Sanjay – all former colleagues. While it might seem an overfunded space, i really like the vertical. It’s highly monetizable, evergreen and more likely to be the answer to a search query which means increased natural traffic from search.