Posted by on under investement, venture investment, founders fund, cofounder, raed, napster, european countries, milli, launch, board of directors, investor | 
This is has not been confirmed by either party, but we've heard from multiple sources that European music startup
Spotify has closed a venture investment from
Founders Fund. Managing Partner
Sean Parker, who was a cofounder of Napster and President of Facebook, led the round for Founders Fund, and we believe he may have take a board of directors seat. We do not know the size of the investement; however, we believe it may have been a token amount to get Parker's involvement in the company. The investment was likely done at the same
€200 million valuation as the round Spotify raised in late 2009. This is the first U.S. investor in Spotify, and the service is only available in some European countries. A U.S. launch has been broadly
anticipated for months.
Tagi: investement, venture investment, founders fund, cofounder, raed, napster, european countries, milli, launch, board of directors, investor
Posted by on under rich skrenta, venture investors, billis, secd, cier, search market, google, cofounder, beta testers, startups, launch, milli, market share, topix, entrepreneur, ace, few days, ceo, blekko, angel |
It takes a crazier than average entrepreneur to go after the search market. There's an entrenched player, Google, with 65% market share. Google is so powerful the second player, Yahoo, just bailed out of the market. And third place Microsoft is throwing billions of dollars around just to get in the game. We've seen Wikia, Cuil and other well backed startups try and fail at search. Now
Blekko is preparing to launch. Will they find success where everyone else has failed? They've been working on Blekko for 2.5 years now - we
first covered them in January 2008. Cofounder and CEO
Rich Skrenta had just left his previous company, Topix. Blekko has raised three rounds of financing since then, totaling
$20 million, from some of the most respected angel and venture investors in Silicon Valley. Blekko remain in private alpha, although I've had the chance to test the engine over the last few days. They will shortly begin letting a few beta testers onto the site, and a full launch will happen later this summer.
Tagi: rich skrenta, venture investors, billis, secd, cier, search market, google, cofounder, beta testers, startups, launch, milli, market share, topix, entrepreneur, ace, few days, ceo, blekko, angel
Posted by on under angel investor, dave mcclure, august capital, paul carr, tello, photographic evidence, twitter, cofounder, xoom, startups, single source, cto, whale, stealth, ceo, investments, checks |
Let's call this a single source rumor. But the source is
Paul Carr's camera, so we feel pretty good about it. The picture was taken last night at the TechCrunch summer party at August Capital.
Tello, says our source (the camera), has raised $100,000 from angel investor
Dave McClure, who's checks appear to have an imprint of the Twitter fail whale in the background. This is one of his first investments from his shiny new
500 Startups fund. What's Tello? We don't actually know. Founder and CEO
Joe Beninato was previously the CEO of Presto.
We had a lot of fun with that one. Cofounder and CTO
John Cwikla has experience at GameLayers, Doostang, Xoom and other startups.
Tagi: angel investor, dave mcclure, august capital, paul carr, tello, photographic evidence, twitter, cofounder, xoom, startups, single source, cto, whale, stealth, ceo, investments, checks
