Tag Archives: Pasadena Angels

Ranker Raises $1.3 Million In Series A

Posted on April 7, 2011 by Amit Chowdhry


Ranker is a consumer web services company that has raised $1.3 million in Series A funding led by Tim Draper. Other investors that are participating in this round include Rincon Venture Partners, Newport Coast Investments, Gil Elbaz, Pasadena Angels, and Siemer Venture Capital. Ranker uses lists to provide answers to questions to users, such as “what are the best beers from around the world?” Visitors can vote or rank the lists. Ranker had raised $1.8 million in two seed funding rounds with participation from several angel investors and Ranker founder and CEO Clark Benson. [TechCrunch]

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Docufide Raises $4.5 Million, Hires Matthew Pittinsky As CEO

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Amit Chowdhry


Docufide is a Los Angeles based company that develops educational software used for transferring high school transcripts to colleges. The company raised $4.5 million and hired Blackboard founder Matthew Pittinsky as their CEO.
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Zubican Search Engine Raises Funding For Finding Local Businesses

Posted on July 29, 2008 by Amit Chowdhry


Zubican is the second search engine company to launch this week (Cuil being the first) backed with funding.  Zubican’s motto is “Find a business in a haystack.”  If you search for a business on Zubican, you will be able to find the number of employees and annual revenues for each company.

Investors in Zubican include Athenaeum Capital, Pasadena Angels, and Tech Coast Angels.  Other investors include executives from JAMDAT Mobile, Rent.com, MP3.com, Tickets.com, and Vivendi.  Users can rate each individual business.  The site is monetized through Google Ads.

Zubican was founded two years ago by Matthew Graczyk, Joe Kevin, and Brian Newton.  Zubican launched in closed Beta in January 2008.  Zubican is based in L.A., Calif.

I have a hard time being convinced that I should switch to Zubican from Google Business Search or Yelp.  Matthew Graczyk, CEO of Zubican discussed with me in the comments how Zubican distinguishes itself from the others.  Zubican plans to improve the search UI to make it more clear to users how to use it.  This is something that I look forward to as the company progresses because I’d like to see strong alternatives to Yelp and Google Business Search.

Thank you Matthew for providing me background info on Zubican.

Related Links:
1. Zubican
2. paidContent

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