Tag Archives: Omidyar Network
Seesmic Raises $4 Million, Bringing Them To A Total Of $16 Million
Seesmic is a social media application company based in San Francisco that enables people to send out mass updates on Twitter and other services. Seesmic competes directly with TweetDeck. Earlier this month Seesmic has raised $4 million in a new round of funding from Salesforce.com, Softbank Group, Atomico, Omidyar Network, and Wellington Partners. Seesmic has raised a total of $16 million thus far.
Facebook Co-Founder Chris Hughes Launches Charity Social Network Jumo
Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes has been busy since helping build the foundation of the world’s largest social network. After co-founding Facebook with Mark, Dustin, and Eduardo he ran President Barack Obama’s social media campaign. His latest innovation is Jumo, a social network for charities. Jumo launched in Beta today. Jumo has profiles of specific charities that you and your friends can follow.
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Google Acquires Database Company Metaweb
Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has acquired Metaweb, a company that develops the open, shared database platform called Freebase. Metaweb was founded by Danny Hillis and Robert Cook in 2005. Metaweb raised $57.5 million in funding over two rounds. Investors include Benchmark Capital, Millennium Technology Ventures, Goldman Sachs, and Omidyar Network. Google said that the Freebase database will remain open and free. [VentureBeat]
Omidyar Network Invests $1.4 Million In Ushahidi
Omdiyar Network – the venture capital firm founded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam has invested $1.7 million in Ushahidi. Ushahidi is an open source emergency alert platform company. Ushahidi collects information from SMS messages, texts, e-mails, and other sources then verifies it. The associated emergencies are then placed on maps and timelines.
Ushahidi developed the platform during the 2008 election in Kenya. Violence took place out of voted fraud suspicion during that time. The platform was made to collect reports from the Kenyan citizens. The maps that Ushahidi put together was used by relief organizations and news agencies to track what is happening in certain regions.
Ushahidi has been rolled out in India, Mexico, and several countries in Africa. Ushahidi will use the money to open an office in Nairobi and to expand their development team. The Omidyar Network has also invested in several other Internet companies such as Digg, Meetup, Wikia, and Seesmic.
Categories Omidyar Network, The Omidyar Network, Ushahidi
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Omidyar Network Plans To Invest $30 Million In India and Africa
The Omidyar Network announced earlier this week that they plan to invest $30 million in India and Africa. The $30 million will be used to support global entrepreneurship and hopes to improve the quality of life for people in those areas. Omidyar Network’s announcement was made at the 5th annual meeting in New York for the Clinton Global Initiative.
“Imagine what’s possible if entrepreneurship flourishes worldwide. Omidyar Network aims to create opportunity for entrepreneurs to succeed; when they do, so do their families and communities,” stated Omidyar Network Managing Partner Matt Bannick. “People living in poverty are often ignored by mainstream businesses; we will prioritize our support for entrepreneurs providing services and products that can improve quality of life for those most in need.”
The investment is intended to be provided for high-impact entrepreneurs with proven business models. The investment will go towards both profit and nonprofit organizations. The Omidyar Network was started by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam.
Categories Matt Bannick, Omidyar Network, The Omidyar Network
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Pierre Omidyar’s Investment Firm Gives Wikipedia $2 Million Grant
Omidyar Network, the investment arm of Pierre Omidyar’s wealth has made a $2 million grant. Pierre is the founder of eBay and his personal wealth is roughly $3.6 billion. The Omidyar Network was started in 2004 and there was about $270 million in assets given to the investment firm.
Some of the Internet companies that the Omidyar Network invested in include Digg, Federated Media Publishing, KaBOOM, Seesmic, Linden Lab, and Wikia. Wikia is another company that was founded by the Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.
Wikipedia receives about 300 million monthly unique visitors and is the 5th most visited website in the world. However Wikipedia runs on donations and does not have any advertising. At the end of last year, about 125,000 donors invested $6.2 million in helping keep Wikipedia alive.
Of that $6.2 million, $3 million was given by the Sloan Foundation and an anonymous friend gave $286,800. As part of the investment, Matt Halprin of Omidyar will be joining the Wikimedia Foundation board of directors. Before working at Omidyar, Halprin was the VP of global trust and safety at eBay.
Recent Tech Funding: TheBig, iFamily, Veveo, Vadver, and Federated Media
Amount Invested: Undisclosed
Series: Angel
TheBig is a video channel website that is based in India. The company has raised angel funding from Suhel Seth and Swapan Seth. Suhel is a Managing Partner with Counselage and Swapan is the CEO of Equus Red Cell. Gaggan Duggal and Chetan Sharma were also investors. Chetan is a consultant for ZeeTV and Duggal is the founder of Matrix, a brand name in international calling cards.
TheBig does not focus on strictly user generated content, but also has original programming. Some of TheBig’s original programming includes Sudarshan: The Lonely Boy, Professor Aye Tein, News With Leela Loose, and Agony Tau.
“With the progressive emancipation of bandwidth and the acutely swift growth of the Internet, we see a long term play in this space. Www.thebig.tv is also very different from a concept like YouTube. YouTube only uploads third party provided content. With www.thebig.tv, there is a lot of content creation from the site itself. Furthermore, over time we will also be offering films that can be downloaded,” stated Swapan Seth.
[Source: alarm:clock]
Amount Invested: $250-$500K
Series: Seed Financing
iFamily gained popularity as a Facebook geneaology application. Below is a screen shot of the application when it is active in a profile:
iFamily’s investor is a boutique investment banking company called CountryRoad Capital. iFamily has about 83,000-plus total profiles and the company was recently given a valuation of about $1 million.
“This investment from CountryRoad Capital will allow iFamily to accelerate its product and business development and sustain its leadership position as the first and foremost genealogy application on Facebook,” stated Ilya Nikolayev, the CEO of iFamily. “CountryRoad has a distinguished track record of identifying and catalyzing unique emerging technology opportunities and we are pleased to partner with CountryRoad’s Managing Partner Andrew Merkatz and his team. Rather than take an existing genealogy application and try to bend it to work within Facebook, and rather than develop a competing family oriented social network, we have chosen to build this application from the bottom up to fully leverage and integrate the power of Facebook. I believe this market positioning is unique and will allow us to drive significant value for our shareholders.”
CountryRoad Capital also invested in SocialMedia.com, the parent company of other Facebook Applications: Happy Hour, Trakzor, Foodfight.
[Source: alarm:clock]
Amount Invested: $28 Million Total
Series: Second Round ($14 Million)
Veveo is the company that created Vtap, a mobile video/Internet search service. The company’s official launch date is September 10th according to VentureBeat.
Vtaps’s search technology focuses on predictive technology rather than the number of incoming links that Google’s PageRank uses. An example that VentureBeat provides is that if you type “Gwy,” then Vtap will suggest Gwenyth Paltrow as the top result. And then users can seamlessly watch clips that feature Paltrow in them.
The investors in Veveo include Norwest Venture Partners, Matrix Partners, and North Bridge Venture Partners. Murali Aravamudan is currently the CEO of Veveo and is a former researcher at Bell Labs.
[Source: alarm:clock]
Amount Invested: $1.7 Million
Series: Series A
Vadver is a start-up site that is aiming to become a video-discovery service. Draper Fisher Jurvetson invested $1.7 million in the company. Vadver is run by Patrick Koppula.
Koppula is also part of iLike.com, Gcast.com, GarageBand.com. Vadver is based in San Francisco.
[Source: alarm:clock]
Amount Invested: $6.75 Million Total
Series: 2nd Round ($4.5 Million)
Federated Media Publishing is company that acts as a brokerage for advertisements to be placed on some of the top web publication and news companies including Digg, TechCrunch, BoingBoing, Mashable, Alarm:Clock, Ars Technica, GigaOM, ReadWriteWeb, VentureBeat, Wikia etc. Inevitably, Pulse 2.0 (P2) is aiming to become a client too, but P2 is still in the growth phase.
Federated Media was founded by John Battelle, author of The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture and co-founding editor of Wired. Investors that participated in this round of funding includes JPMorgan and Omidyar Network (started by eBay’s founder).
[Source: PEHub]
Socialtext Raises $3 Million Toward $6.5 Million Series C Funding
Socialtext[1] is a Palo Alto, Calif. based company that builds wiki enterprise products. This type of product is especially useful for those who do not have the time or knowledge to set-up their own wiki. It is also useful for those who have become fed up with sending attachments back-and-forth through e-mail. I know a couple of start-ups that interact via wikis to report daily progress.
Socialtext announced that they have raised $3 million towards a desired $6.5 million Series C funding amount. Some of the previous investors include Draper Fisher Jurvetson[2], SAP[3], Omidyar Network[4], Mark Pincus (CEO of Tribe.net[5]), and Reid Hoffman (Chairman of LinkedIn[6]). Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia[7] serves as a Board member for Socialtext.
Ross Mayfield, Peter Kaminski, and Adina Levin are founders of the company. A product tour is available at: http://www.socialtext.com/products/tour[8]. The Socialtext blog is available at: http://www.socialtext.com/blog/[9].
In November 2006, Google acquired Jotspot, a similar wiki concept[9]. Wetpaint, a wiki-builder website raised $9.5 million in funding[10] around January 2007 as well. Wikis are a strong market and millions of dollars are constantly being plugged in.
[1] Socialtext.com
[2] DFJ.com
[3] SAP.com
[4] Omidyar.net
[5] Tribe.net
[6] LinkedIn.com
[7] Wikipedia.org
[8] Socialtext.com Product Tour
[9] Pulse 2.0: Google’s Gone Wiki
[10] Pulse 2.0: Wiki-Builder Website, Wetpaint Welcomes $9.5M Funding
Categories Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Omidyar Network, SAP AG, Socialtext
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Greylock Partners and Omidyar Network Plug Another $8.5 Million into Digg
Kevin Rose’s Digg.com, the biggest user-contributed news aggregator website has raised $8.5 million in funding from previous investors of Digg, Greylock Partners and the Omidyar Network. Pierre Omidyar is a founder of eBay and the Omidyar Network.
According to VentureBeat, “Statistics have become a major sticking point for Digg, with the company saying in October that it has 20 million users, while conservative measurement sites like Comscore say Digg has a mere 1.3 million.”
Another interesting point that VentureBeat’s Matt Marshall brings up is that Digg limits the investors to insiders. Digg believes that it is the insiders that truly understand the revenue potential that Digg has. Insiders believe that Digg is worth so much that they do not want other parties involved.
Digg has recently revamped their entire user interface and implemented a new feature for videos users could view external videos directly on a Digg page rather than actually having to leave the website.
Currently Digg is ranked #76 on Alexa and #144 on Compete.com.
Categories Digg, Greylock Partners, Omidyar Network
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