One billion views
0 CommentsWikia passes one billion page views and 70 million unique users in a month, mostly from gamers.
What's this? This is an unbiased just-the-facts news timeline ('newsline') about Jeremy Levine, created by Newslines contributors. Become a contributor
Jeremy Seth Levine is a venture capitalist born in 1974. He graduated magna cum laude from Duke University with a BS in Computer Science and Economics, and worked as a business analyst at McKinsey & Co. and an associate at AEA Investors from 1995 to 1999, when he joined internet company Dash. He joined Bessemer Venture Partners in 2001 and led the company’s investments in Yelp and LinkedIn. He has also served on the boards of Pinterest.com, Wikia, GraceNote, Soap.com, Diapers.com, Onestop, Shopify, and other startups. He is married with three children, and is based in Larchmont, N.Y., and Silicon Valley.
Wikia passes one billion page views and 70 million unique users in a month, mostly from gamers.
Levine tells Pando Daily that the next billion dollar business idea is on the front page of Craigslist. He compares the site’s link to sell and buy tickets with StubHub, and accommodation services to AirBNB:
And the best example of it is arguably Uber. There is a link on the homepage of Craigslist or within any one city on Craigslist for transportation. I think it’s even auto transportation. So you could actually for fifteen years now arrange for someone to pick you up and take you someplace on Craigslist. But no one did it, I mean a few people did it, but not like we use Uber.
Wikia says the $15 million Series D round doubles its valuation. It doesn’t give the overall figure. Page views pass 1.8 billion from 120 million global unique monthly users, and there are 34 million pages of content across 200 languages, with 400,000 fan communities.
Bessemer joins Digital Garage, Amazon, and Institutional Venture Partners in the $15 million round as Wikia looks to break into Asia. Joi Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab and a board member at Digital Garage, becomes an advisor for its expansion into Japan along with other Japanese investors and firms.
Yelp reports profit of $2.7 million for the three months ended June 30, or four cents a share, compared with a year-earlier loss of $878,000, or a penny a share. Analysts had expected a loss of three cents a share.
Wikia breaks into the QuantCast Top 20. Levine:
Tortoises (not just hares) can even win on the Internet
The company announces Series F funding from its existing roster including SV Angel, Bessemer, Fidelity, Andreessen Horowitz, FirstMark Capital, and Valiant Capital Partners. Total financing is $764 million, and the company is working on building out its ad monetization system and its search functions.
Pinterest starts Promoted Pins to add revenue, appearing in users’ search and category feeds. The mix of brands reflects activity on the site. Fashion features heavily, with Gap, Banana Republic, Lululemon Athletica, and Old Navy participating. Food makers Nestle , Kraft, and General Mills are also participating, along with Expedia.com and Walt Disney resorts in the travel category.
In an interview with Forbes magazine, Levine talks about how he finds successful entrepreneurs:
There isn’t a goto way of assessing and saying, ‘Ok, here are the six criteria this founder matches.’ But, in almost all cases, there is something exceptional about the person. And sometimes it’s not one person, sometimes it’s two, and they have this incredible way of complimenting each other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
The distribution giant buys an equity stake of undisclosed size as it looks to add cloud and virtualization capacity for customers that include technology resellers and IT professionals. Under the terms of the deal, Ingram will provide resellers with unified commercial terms and product support.
U.S. District Judge Cathy Seibel pares the lawsuit against Bessemer, cutting more than half of the claims by Intego parent Neutral Holdings, but rejects Bessemer’s motion to dismiss several claims against it. (A summary of the claims is here.) Neutral Holdings attorney Philippe C. M. Manteau:
This opinion is especially important for non-U.S. entities seeking investment from U.S. venture capitalists by providing these foreign entities with an adequate level of comfort and predictability as minority shareholders in cross-border ventures.
Cisco buys a 1% stake, giving the software provider a seat on the Parallels board.
Bessemer participates in a follow-on investment with Amazon and Institutional Venture Partners, supplying over $10.8 million. The site now supports 250,000 communities and 20 million pages of user-generated content, 100,000 videos, and 14 million photos. Wales says the site is making a profit:
[It will remain] profitable for years.
The iconic baseball bat maker hires the company to build its new website after going over about half a dozen proposals collected by its ad agency, MEplusYOU of Dallas. Kyle Schlegel at parent company Hillerich & Bradsby says Onestop immediately stood out because of its intimate knowledge of the e-commerce business and the Slugger brand. The buildout is due to be finished by January and will give customers a wider range of purchase options and a better browsing experience.
French company Transeo LLC files a lawsuit in Federal District Court in New York asserting that three limited partnerships controlled by Bessemer breached fiduciary duties and contracts through abuse of a dominant position as controlling shareholder of Neutral Holdings, Inc., the holding company of Intego. Levine attends court sessions for Bessemer.
The network access and virtual PC privelege provider doesn’t disclose financial terms, but says the combined company will have $70 million revenues, up from a projected $50 million at Beyondtrust without the deal. Maiffret keeps his CTO position. Bessemer is bought out and Levine leaves the eEye board for his fourth major exit.
The site adds hub pages separating content into entertainment, gaming, and lifestyle categories, allowing advertisers to expand beyond individual articles to category verticals and the front page and encouraging higher, more targeted traffic.
Yelp debuts on the NYSE, with shares jumping 63.9% from the IPO price to close at a $24.58. The closing price places the company’s market value at $1.47 billion.
The company remains unprofitable ahead of its IPO, reporting a full-year net loss in 2011 of $16.7 million on sales of $83.3 million. In 2010, it lost $9.6 million on $47.7 million revenue. It has also cut cut half its sales staff. Other internet companies have successfully gone public despite questions about their business model, and Yelp pushes ahead with IPO plans.
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