Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Michael Eisner

TaskRabbit Raises $17.8 Million In Series B

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 03:58:04 +0000

TaskRabbit is a Bay Area based startup company that helps you find personal assistants for having your house cleaned, running errands, building IKEA furniture, delivering groceries, etc. Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner is joining TaskRabbit’s board of directors as a strategic adviser.

TaskRabbit has raised $17.8 million in Series B funding from existing investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Allen & Company, and the Tornante Company. Eisner runs the Tornante Company.

TaskRabbit plans on using the funding to hire additional engineers and designers. They will also spend it on building mobile products like an Android app. They will also expand to other U.S. cities and abroad. In the next couple of months, TaskRabbit will be available in Seattle and Portland. International expansion is expected by the end of 2012.

Eisner approached TaskRabbit after hearing about it on a News special with Diane Sawyer this past September. TaskRabbit saw about 6.5 million users visit their company website after that. “He really saw the potential in what we’re building. Every single task that’s posted and completed is a story, and even the TaskRabbits themselves are stories,” stated TaskRabbit founder Leah Busque. TaskRabbit was founded in 2008.

[AllThingsD]

Michael Eisner Joins Board of Directors at IAC

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 12:10:08 +0000

Michael Eisner, the former CEO of The Walt Disney Company (1984-2005), has joined the board of directors at IAC/InterActiveCorp (NASDAQ:IACI). IAC now has 13 board members. Before Disney, Eisner was the President of Paramount for 8 years. He also founded investment firm Tornante.

Zumbox Raises $8 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:16:15 +0000

Zumbox is a company that designed a system for converting postal letters into electronic format. The company announced today that they have raised $8 million in funding.

The funding was provided by Art Bilger (Shelter Capital Partners), Rick Braddock (Fresh Direct), Michael Eisner (former Disney CEO), Bill Guth (Guthy-Renker), and Donn Rappaport (CEO and founder of Zumbox).

Zumbox will be officially launching their service in Q4 of this year. Zumbox does not digitize postal mail, but allows people to select different templates that standard mail looks like.

Then you can send the mail to anyone in the world by entering their actual postal address and it gets sent to them in electronic format to Zumbox’s servers. Zumbox will allow the person residing at the postal address to check their Zumbox mail through their website.

The concept is a bit strange. I have my doubts that this service will really take off, but I won’t really know until the service goes public and I get the chance to try it out.

Veoh Reportedly Shopping Around For A Buyer

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:18:04 +0000

One of YouTube’s most critical flaws when the company first started was that the video quality was inferior. This is where companies such as Joost and Veoh wanted to hit YouTube where it counted. Both Joost and Veoh had higher quality videos than YouTube, but they lacked in quantity. Last week Joost decided to focus on video platforms for companies rather than making deals with companies to stream their content.

Now Veoh is reportedly giving up on being a streaming video start-up company. AllThingsD is reporting that the company is looking for a buyer for a price that is below the $70 million in funding that they have raised over the last four years. The $30 million Series D round of funding took place back in June 2008.

Some of the previous investors include former Disney CEO Michael Eisner and Goldman Sachs. The company has not been profitable and last year alone they lost about $6 million. Veoh is also facing litigation from Universal Music Group which is accusing them of copyright vilations.

Currently there is no word on who a potential buyer may be, but considering how much traffic Veoh is receiving I would not be surprised if an acquisition takes place in the near future.