Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Jim Breyer

Jim Breyer: #1 On 2012′s Forbes Midas List Of Top Tech Investors

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 03 May 2012 15:14:19 +0000

For the second time in a row, Jim Breyer has been selected as the #1 position of the Midas List of top tech investors. Five out of the top tech investors have Facebook as a portfolio company. Investors in LinkedIn, Groupon, Twitter, and Zynga also put them in the list. Only 5 of the people in the list are women. This is one of the reasons why so many people are criticizing the list on Twitter. The top 10 on the list are:

1. Jim Breyer
2. Marc Andreessen
3. Reid Hoffman
4. David Sze
5. Peter Fenton
6. Josh Kopelman
7. Paul Madera
8. Peter Thiel
9. Kevin Efrusy
10. Jeremy Levine

UberMedia Raises $17.5 Million, Acquires TweetDeck For $30 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 22:26:10 +0000

UberMedia has raised $17.5 million in a round of funding led by Accel Partners with participation from Index Ventures and Revolution Ventures. This puts UberMedia’s valuation at about $40 million. Index Ventures. Over the weekend, Ubermedia also acquired TweetDeck for $30 million in cash and equity. UberMedia head Bill Gross and TweetDeck founder Iain Dodsworth are focused on building businesses within the Twitter ecosystem. Jim Breyer of Accel will be joining the UberMedia board of directors. Below is the funding press release:

Accel Partners Leads Investment Round in UberMedia, Jim Breyer Joins Board of Directors

PASADENA, Calif.–February 14, 2011–UberMedia, the leading independent provider of applications for reading and posting to Twitter and other social media platforms, today announced that it completed a financing round led by Jim Breyer of Accel Ventures. Existing investors Steve Case of Revolution Ventures and Danny Rimer of Index Ventures also participated.

“At UberMedia, our goal is to enhance the Twitter experience with functionality in our clients and to be the best partner with Twitter in growing and enhancing their ecosystem,” said Bill Gross, Founder and CEO. “In particular, the addition of Jim Breyer to our board will really enable us to succeed at this mission. His experience on the boards of Wal-Mart, Facebook, Marvel Entertainment, Dell and so many other high-profile consumer brands will be particularly helpful.”

“We’ve been watching closely Bill’s efforts at UberMedia to build upon the ground-breaking communications platform created by Twitter,” said Jim Breyer of Accel Partners. “We see a tremendous business in the kinds of innovations in user experience being developed at UberMedia. The result of these efforts will be an expansion in the number and variety of people engaged with Twitter as well as a method for advertisers to reach consumers in highly targeted and relevant ways.”

Art.sy Raises $1.25 Million From Several Angel Investors

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 23:09:17 +0000

Art.sy is a New York City based startup company that has raised $1.25 million in funding. Investors in Art.sy include Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Rupert Murdoch’s wife Wendi, Jack Dorsey (Twitter co-founder), Jim Breyer, Dash Zhukova, Founder Collective, Keith Rabois, David Tisch, Charlei Cheever, Dave Morin, and David Kidder. Art.sy’s funding was led by Thrive Capital. Art.sy raised $160,000 in seed funding and launched at TechCrunch Disrupt. Art.sy was founded by 24 year old founder Carter Cleveland and he decided to make the website private again. Now he is shifting his service to be more focused on high-end art deals. [TechCrunch]

Accel, Kleiner Perkins, and DAG Invest $20 Million Into Booyah

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 17 May 2010 19:20:07 +0000

Booyah is the parent company of the MyTown location-based check-in service that competes directly with Gowalla and Foursquare. Booyah has raised $20 million in funding from Accel, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and DAG Ventures. Accel partner Jim Breyer will be joining the board of directors at Booyah.

Booyah has raised a total of $29.5 million since starting in 2008. They have about 2.1 million users and expect to hit 6 million by the end of the summer. [TechCrunch]

Profile of Facebook Board Member Jim Breyer Gets Hacked

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 10 May 2010 15:53:17 +0000

You know that Facebook is having security issues when they can’t even prevent their own staff member’s accounts from getting hacked. Facebook board member and investor Jim Breyer had his Facebook account hacked over the weekend. His account sent a message to over 2,300 of his Facebook friends asking them “would you like a Facebook phone number?” The link led to a website where users were prompted to enter their passwords. And then the hack spread more from there.

“This was a phishing scam and Jim’s account appears to have been compromised. The issue has since been resolved and we’re actively trying to block this activity,” Facebook said in a statement sent to PEHub. Breyer is a partner at Accel Partners.

[PEHub]

Jim Breyer Of Accel Cleaned Up This Week

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:01:52 +0000

Jim Breyer of Accel Partners had an amazing 24 hours yesterday. Raytheon had acquired BBN Technologies and Disney bought out Marvel. Breyer helped buy out BBN Technologies about five years ago which gave a nice return to Accel Partners.

Breyer was the third largest direct shareholder in Marvel Entertainment. He made the investment from his own personal funds and not on behalf of Accel. According to regulatory filings, Breyer will make $5 million personally from Disney’s acquisition of Marvel.

BBN was purchased by Bell Atlantic back in the day but ended up not gaining much traction after that. BNN was started by three MIT professors that implemented ARPANET (the base for the founding of the Internet). BBN was the first to create packet switching, the first router, and the first network e-mail using the @ symbol.