Joins eBay board
Andreessen joins eBay’s board of directors while working on the Ning social networking platform. eBay President/CEO John Donahoe says:
Marc is a true visionary whose experience will be invaluable to eBay. We look forward to learning from Marc’s insights and expertise as we drive further innovation on our platform, invest in growth opportunities, and develop technology that will further benefit our customers, build powerful communities and enhance e-commerce.
First year success
Sweetgreen has seen strong sales over the past year and has made a significant profit selling salads, wraps and yogurt despite the fact that its store is small and only has a few tables and benches. Their customers are mostly young adults and students.
Before we opened, we outlined three financial projections: worst case, most likely case and best case. And, over the past year, we have performed financially at least in best case or over.
Joins Facebook board
After a period of speculation, Andreessen officially joins Facebook’s board of directors alongside Mark Zuckerberg, Jim Breyer, and Peter Thiel. The official press release calls Andreessen’s venture Ning, “a complementary platform to Facebook,” rather than a potential rival. Andressen says:
Facebook is one of the most innovative companies on the Web and it’s an honor to join the board. I’m looking forward to helping the team as Facebook continues to grow.
Zynga Series A
SV Angel is reported to join the round with Union Square Ventures, Pilot Group, Avalon Ventures, and individual investors, for a total of $10 million.
Foundry, Union Square invest
Foundry Group, along with Union Square Ventures invests in Zygna’s Series A-1 investment of nearly $5 million. Zynga makes social games that run on mobile devices and desktops. Its most famous product is Farmville, a social game that allows Facebook users to create a virtual farm.
Criticizes liberals
Walker sends out a fund-raising letter to supporters criticizing Governor Doyle and his liberal allies:
Jim Doyle and his liberal allies in Madison don’t think you’re paying enough in taxes. Even though Wisconsin is one of the highest taxed states in the nation, Doyle and liberals in Madison and Milwaukee want to raise taxes by another $18 billion.
Japan Today sold
The Devlins sell Japan Today to GPlus Media, a Tokyo-based publishing company known for Real Estate Japan and GaijinPot, a community site for foreigners in Japan.
Metropolis sale
After publishing over 700 issues, the Devlins sell Metropolis to Lloyd, a New Zealand and Australian dual national, based in Japan. Over 14 years the magazine has grown to over 80 full-color pages every week made by a team of 35 staff from all over the world. The magazine has annual sales of ¥360 million and 20% profit, from hundreds of display and commercial classified advertisers and is, by far, Japan’s No 1 English magazine. A brief history of Metropolis is here.
Opens first store
Georgetown University graduates Nicolas Jammet, Jonathan Neman and Nathaniel Ru open their first store in Georgetown. They want to connect with people through food. Because they have nowhere healthy to eat, they decide to start a healthy restaurant that is fun and also promotes their core values. They focus on creating a farm to table experience from food that is locally sourced.
Sweetgreen was born when we were still students. The three of us really bonded over the fact that there was something missing in our life — we had nowhere healthy to eat. . . . We wanted to create something healthy, that was fun. Wouldn’t it be cool if there was someplace that did our values. We shared this passion for creating something and we just decided to close our eyes and do it.
$12m Series B funding
Loopt raises a reported $12 million from its two existing investors, Sequoia Capital and NEA. It is reported to call down $2.25 million from the funding.
Funds Justin.tv
Graham funds Kan and Shear’s second venture, Justin.tv, supplying $50,000 through Y Combinator. The website featues a single channel tracking Kan, who wears a camera on his head and a backpack full of cellphone modems, as he goes about life in San Francisco. It attracts tens of thousands of viewers. Graham:
I thought it was insanely weird.
Founds Wikileaks
Assange founds WikiLeaks, an international not-for-profit organization, with the launch of their website wikileaks.org. The mission of the organization is to to bring news to the public, by allowing anonymous sources to leak information in a safe and secure way to journalists. The website is run out of Sweden, due to their strong laws protecting a person’s anonymity.
Amazon buys TextPayMe
The deal is worth a rumored $3 million as Amazon branches out its payments strategy, allowing users to text money to each other by SMS.
Reddit bought by Condé Nast
Condé Nast Publications acquires Reddit for a reported $20 million. All four Reddit employees relocate from Boston to Wired’s San Francisco office and become part of Wired Digital, which the company bought three months previously. Conde Naste:
Our goal will be to build Reddit as an independent company by collaborating with Wired through the integration of its core technology, and by offering partnerships to allow other companies to do the same.
At this time the site has 70,000 daily unique visitors and approximately 700,000 or so page views.
Google buys YouTube
Google has recently purchased a majority (more than 50%) of YouTube for $1.65 billion. All 67 of YouTube’s employees kept their positions. Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube, says:
I’m confident that with this partnership we will have the flexibility and resources needed to pursue our goal of building the next-generation platform for serving media worldwide.
Co-founds (RED)
Bono and Shriver team up for another humanitarian venture to found (RED) to raise money from businesses to buy AIDS drugs for people in Africa unable to afford them. After setting up DATA, the two noticed that there was still a need for greater private sector funding and created (RED) as a division of ONE, to fill that need. They hopes to generate a sustainable flow of money to aid in their efforts.
Product (RED) has an ongoing relationship with a number of iconic global brands that sell (RED) products and donate a percentage of the profits directly to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Launch Crisscross Social Network
Crisscross Social Network is launched. The site uses a sophisticated drill-down search to connect people with the multiple, diverse interests.
The system grows to over 30,000 users, mainly in Japan.
It was not until 2012 that sites like Facebook offered similar “graph search” functions. In 2012 the site was being prepared for relaunch in the U.S. as CRXSS, a social search engine.
$5m Series A funding
Sequoia and NEA participate in the round for a reported $5 million.
Acquired by Google
0 0 lesley lesley2014-06-25 00:58:072015-02-06 09:50:52Acquired by GoogleLoopt joins Y Combinator
Loopt joins the inaugural batch and receives a reported $6,000. Altman says the money-saving culture at Y Combinator, which extends to things like readymade meals, helps develop the location-based mobile app company develop:
That culture of frugality and discipline is really important for the Y Combinator mindset. The start-ups that do well are the ones that are working all the time.