Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Y Combinator

People Search Engine Ark Raises $4.2 Million In Seed Round

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 19:55:34 +0000

Ark is a people search engine launched at Y Combinator Demo Day that has raised $4.2 million in a seed round of funding. Ark crawls Facebook, RenRen, LinkedIn, and Twitter to find out as much data as possible. The founders at Ark got the idea for the startup when they found out that 30% of searches are for people.

In March 2012, Ark indexed over 1 billion people from their social networking data. About 250,000 people have signed up for beta invites.

The $4.2 million seed round is the largest that any Y Combinator has received. Investors in this round include Andreessen Horowitz, Charles River Ventures, Greylock Partners, Intel Capital, SV Angel, Atlas Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Expansion Venture Capital, and Felicis Ventures. Angel investors from Facebook, Salesforce.com, Qualcomm, and Microsoft also participated in this round.

Ark currently has 20 people on staff and they plan to hire more for their mobile and search engineering teams. Ark started in summer 2011 and their search engine was developed during the Y Combinator Winter Program.

Y Combinator Now Letting Participants Apply Even Without An Idea

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 15:33:46 +0000

Technology incubator company is trying something completely different for people that are interested in applying for their startup boot camp. They are going to have a separate application for people that don’t have an idea yet. Now nothing is holding you back from becoming part of a startup. If you apply for this class batch and you seem like a good found, you will be accepted without an idea and then you can come up with one.

Y Combinator is doing this because they realized that they were already accepting people without proper ideas. Reddit started off as a service that was going to be a way to order food from a cellphone. Scribd originally started as a ride-sharing service.

Y Combinator also believes that smart people who think that they cannot come up with a good startup idea is generally mistaken. Every smart person has an idea in them. To apply without an idea, just go to http://news.ycombinator.com/apply-noidea.

“YouTube For Businesses” Service Vidyard Raises $1.65 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 23:08:17 +0000

Vidyard is a company that is considered a “YouTube for Businesses.” The company has raised $1.65 million from SoftTech VC, Jawed Karim (YouTube co-founder), Y Combinator, SV Angel, iNovia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Paul Buchheit, Vivi Nevo, David Nizkad, Dennis Kavelman, and several others.

Vidyard launched in August and is intended for businesses to use as a marketing tool. Vidyard is similar to YouTube, but their video upload services links to the brand’s website rather than YouTube itself. Vidyard also has real-time analytics about embed performance and there is ad free video hosting. Video players can be branded and there is instant search technology.

Vidyard allows you to upload a video file or a video from YouTube. Then you can add a custom thumbnail and use 10 different player skins with different sizes and colors. You can also enable viral sharing on Twitter and Facebook.

Vidyard has also added the ability to push video content to YouTube channels, Facebook walls, and Twitter feeds today. You can also pull in YouTube analytics into your Vidyard Dashboard.

[TechCrunch]

ZeroCater Raises $1.5 Million To Help You Plan Office Lunches

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 14:07:19 +0000

ZeroCater is a startup that plans to help you plan lunchtime for you office by handling the logistics around it. The company recently announced $1.5 million in funding. Previous investors include StartFund (SV Angel and Yuri Milner) and Y Combinator.

ZeroCater removes the hassle of ordering lunch for employees on a regular basis. When companies sign up, they tell ZeroCenter how many employees need to be fed and if there is any special dietary requests. ZeroCenter works out deals with the restaurants too. ZeroCenter also tries to rotate different restaurants so you don’t get sick of the same food.

ZeroCater is currently based in the Bay Area of California. ZeroCater co-founder Arram Sabeti plans on using the additional funding to expand into other areas with New York being the next target. Some of the other previous investors in ZeroCater include Keith Rabois, Paul Buccheit, Vaizra International, Felix Shpilman, Stewart Alsop, Justin Kan, Emmet Shear, Othman Laraki, Gabor Cselle, Mark Friedgan, Alexander Goldstein, and Starling Ventures.

[TC]

MemSQL Raises $2.1 Million From Multiple Investors

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 04:41:11 +0000

MemSQL has raised $2.1 million in seed funding from First Round Capital, New Enterprise Associates, Start Fund, SV Angel, Y Combinator, Ashton Kutcher, Paul Bucheit, Sam Altman, Guy Oseary, and several others. MemSQL will be using the funding to move into a new office in downtown San Francisco. MemSQL is an in-memory database system that is 30 times faster than relational databases. MemSQL focuses on online transaction processing.

Rumor: Airbnb In The Process Of Raising Over $100 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 31 May 2011 07:02:36 +0000

Airbnb is close to raising over $100 million based on a valuation of over $1 billion. This round is being lead by Andreessen Horowitz. Participation is expected from DST. Airbnb’s last round of funding was about $7.2 million and included Sequoia Capital, Greylock, SV Angel, Ashton Kutcher, and Youniversity Ventures. Airbnb launched out of Y Combinator.

Airbnb connects people who have space in their home to share with people who are looking for a place to stay. Guests can build a connection with their hosts.

Inporia Raises $1.25 Million From NEA, SV Angel, 500 Startups, Others

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 11 May 2011 15:18:50 +0000

Inporia is a stealth e-commerce start-up company that has raised $1.25 million in funding. Inporia was founded by Ryan Junee, who is known for co-founding Omnisio (acquired by Google) and works as an advisor at 500 Startups. The investors in this round include New Enterprise Associates, SV Angel, 500 Startups, Clearstone Venture Partners, Y Combinator, Ignition Partners, Southern Cross Venture Partners, and Start Fund. [TechCrunch]

Grubwithus Raises $1.6 Million To Encourage Dinner Dates

Amit Chowdhry — Sun, 08 May 2011 21:16:40 +0000

Grubwithus is a social dining service where you pick a restaurant in a city that you like and buy a ticket for a meal at a set price. To really make the service work, other people have to buy a meal at the same place and you can coordinate a time to meet at the restaurant.

Grubwithus spun out of Y Combinator last year and raised $1.6 million from Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, SV Angel, Yuri Milner, New Enterprise Associations, Ashton Kutcher, Guy Oseary, Vivi Nevo, Matt Cutts, Maynard Webb, Elad Gil, Paul Buchheit, Alexis Ohanian, and Start Fund.

Grubwithus also highlights charity and raffle dinners on their website. Grubwithus is currently available in Chicago, San Francisco, New York, D.C., and L.A. They will soon be available in Boston and Seattle. Chicago is their biggest city as they started there. They plan to hire more people to their 8 person team as a result of the funding.

[TechCrunch]

Google Acquires Customer Feedback Company TalkBin

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 05:54:04 +0000

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has acquired TalkBin. TalkBin started less than 5 months ago. TalkBin was incubated at Y Combinator and was acquired on the same day as another Y Combinator company called Wufoo. TalkBin’s platform allows customers to give feedback immediately to local businesses. TalkBin has Android and iOS applications. TalkBin was founded in December 2010 by Qasar Younis, Sunny Dhillon, and Michael Ma. TalkBin will be shut down temporarily, but will be reopened again in the near future. [TechCrunch]

SwipeGood Raises $500,000 From Several Angel Investors

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 21:00:11 +0000

SwipeGood is a Y Combinator company that has raised $500,000 from several investors, including Bebo co-founder Michael Birch. They have also received funding from The Start Fund, Y Combinator, Ron Bouganim, MR Rangaswami, and Frederik Fleck. After enrolling your credit card with SwipeGood, every purchase will be rounded up to the nearest dollar and that remaining amount will be donated to charity. So if you buy $7.60 worth of goods from a grocery store, you will be charged $8 instead and the remaining $0.40 will be given to charity. This extra change can add up and make an impact with charities. [TechCrunch]