Quadrangle Capital, WI Harper Group, And Novel TMT Ventures Delivers $35 Million To Mail.com

By Amit Chowdhry ● Oct 22, 2008

Mail.com Media is a portal that is powered by the Ask.com search engine.  Mail.com looks just like AOL Mail and Yahoo Mail. For example, the search engine is at the top, the navigation is on the left sidebar, the news stories are in the center, and advertisements are on the bottom right and left sidebars.

Mail.com raised $35 million in its fourth round of funding.  The funding was led by Quadrangle Capital Partners. Other investors that participated in this round of funding was WI Harper Group and Novel TMT Ventures. Prior to this round of funding, Mail.com had a valuation of about $109 million.

In conjunction with the funding, Daniel Rosensweig and Andrew Frey will join the Mail.com board of directors. Frey is a Principal at Quadrangle.  And Rosensweig is an Operating Principal at Quadrangle. Rosensweig is the former COO of Yahoo!

About 2 million people use Mail.com as of today.  Mail.com has the ability to provide users with specialty e-mail addresses.

Mail.com was launched in the late 90’s, then shut down after the dot-com bubble burst.  Jay Penske relaunched the site in 2007.

Jay Penske is the son of Roger Penske, founder of the Penske Corporation. Jay is also the co-founder of Firefly Mobile, a company that manufactures cellphones with a call mom and call dad button. Those cell phones are intended for kids ages 5-12.

“We look forward to welcoming Quadrangle as a valuable partner in Mail.com, and Andrew and Dan to our board of directors,” stated Jay in a press release. “Quadrangle’s sector experience, internet expertise and extensive network of relationships will provide meaningful benefits to Mail.com as we continue to broaden our portfolio of brands, and accelerate the growth of our company.”