Fliesler is leaving the entrepreneurial world for the cushy VC life at the relatively young age of 28. That’s because, as he put it, “I do growth.” He wants to work closely with young startups, rather than fill a role at an already large company.

At Square, “I was spending a lot of time being a manager and not as much time at the white board,” Fliesler said. And rather than repeat (hopefully) that pattern with other fast-growing companies, he chose what he called “a terminal path” of being a VC for the rest of his life.

Fliesler has had a rapid-fire career. From an early gig in real estate investments, he joined Max Levchin’s Slide in 2007, where he led partnerships, platform relationships, payments and various products. When Slide was acquired by Google, he was director of product.

Then he followed former Slide executive Keith Rabois to Square, where Rabois was COO until he left after allegations of personal misconduct (that’s the other Square guy who became a VC — Rabois is now joining Khosla Ventures). Fliesler attested that the departures were unrelated, and that Square has a strong remaining executive team. Former Square director of products Megan Quinn is also now a VC at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

At Matrix, Fliesler said, he doesn’t intend to specialize in any particular category — Slide was a social product, Square was business-to-business — but rather intends to find young companies he likes and thinks he can help.

As I previously reported was likely, former Square COO Keith Rabois will be joining Khosla Ventures as a venture capitalist.

The well-known entrepreneur left the prominent San Francisco-based payments company in the midst of unproven allegations of personal misconduct a month ago.

Rabois, who will start in March, has a lot of informal investing experience as a longtime angel, and is on many public boards, such as Yelp and Xoom, but for the most part, he has played the No. 2 to a string of high-profile entrepreneurs, including Peter Thiel at PayPal, Max Levchin at Slide and, most recently, Jack Dorsey at Square.

And, in fact, Rabois was considering another job like that, deciding between Khosla and a top job at Airbnb, the San Francisco online rentals startup.

But he chose Khosla, he said in a blog post, because he has long wanted to formalize his interest in investing.

Wrote Rabois: “I moved to Silicon Valley in 2000, joining a bunch of misfits who had some provocative ideas about how the world should work. Three years later, I started investing to enable other driven people to chase their dreams. I quickly discovered that the more companies I invested in, the more brilliant and inspirational new people I could encourage. As a result, for twelve years I harboured dreams of becoming a VC who did this every day for a long time.”

The choice of two very attractive alternatives is in stark contrast to the more tense situation for Rabois just a month ago, after accusations of sexual harassment arose related to a relationship he had with a Square employee.

Rabois has denied the allegations aimed at him and at the San Francisco payments company, which have not yet turned into a lawsuit, and has thus far been backed by Square. Rabois called the accusations by the employee “fiction” and a “shakedown.”

That said, due to the controversy around the serious workplace issue, he stepped down from his job as COO.

Square founder and CEO Jack Dorsey endorsed the move in a statement:

“I couldn’t be more excited to see two of the top entrepreneurs I know, join forces at Khosla Ventures to support and coach the next generation of entrepreneurs the world over,” Dorsey said.

Here’s the official press release from Khosla:

Keith Rabois Joins the Khosla Ventures Team

Angel investor, Internet Entrepreneur and Hands-On Advisor
Brings His Experience to Khosla’s Broad Portfolio of Companies

MENLO PARK, Calif., February 26, 2013 — Khosla Ventures, a venture assistance firm that focuses on sustainability and technology startups, announced today that Keith Rabois, a former PayPal, LinkedIn and Slide executive, will join the firm. Most recently Keith was chief operating officer at Square, a Khosla Ventures portfolio company, where he oversaw all aspects of business operations, including marketing, communications, business development, distribution, human resources and risk management.

While serving in executive roles, he has also developed a distinguished track record angel investing in technology companies, such as YouTube, Yammer, Airbnb, LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD), Quora, Palantir, and Eventbrite.

He will begin his new role at Khosla in March 2013.

“I love Khosla Ventures’ vision and passion for assisting the next generation of entrepreneurs,” said Keith Rabois. “The Khosla team encourages entrepreneurs to be bold. And the team’s legendary work ethic ensures that entrepreneurs will receive the best possible assistance.”

“We are thrilled to have Keith join us as he has shown himself to be a great investor, but even more importantly he’s a true advisor. Our extensive conversations with entrepreneurs repeatedly elicited comments like, ‘he asks the toughest questions’, ‘he pushes me the most and makes me think’, ‘he is always there when I need help’, ‘he is the most valuable among all my board members and advisors’, ‘he can imagine the future’,” said Vinod Khosla, founding partner of Khosla Ventures. “Our belief in bringing the best venture assistance to our companies is why we’re very excited about the newest addition to the Khosla Ventures team. He truly has earned the right to advise companies.”

Jack Dorsey, the CEO and founder of Square added, “I couldn’t be more excited to see two of the top entrepreneurs I know, join forces at Khosla Ventures to support and coach the next generation of entrepreneurs the world over.”

Keith currently holds board roles at Xoom (NASDAQ: XOOM), since June 2003, and Yelp (NYSE: YELP), since September 2005.

Keith Rabois, the former Square COO who left the company in the midst of unproven allegations of personal misconduct, is weighing an offer to join Silicon Valley venture firm Khosla Ventures, according to sources close to the situation, and is currently leaning toward accepting the job there.

But, that could change. In an interesting twist, the longtime entrepreneur and investor has also been in discussions with Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky to become COO or president there.

Both the VC and the startup have been doing reference checks on Rabois, news of which has gotten out in the ever-chatty Silicon Valley scene. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier today that Rabois had been in talks with the San Francisco-based online housing rentals company.

But sources with knowledge of the situation said that Rabois — who has played the No. 2 to a string of high-profile entrepreneurs, including Peter Thiel at PayPal, Max Levchin at Slide and, most recently, Jack Dorsey at Square — seems “99 percent” ready to move into a more formal investing role.

Of course, there is still that one percent chance he might not, underscored by the eternal lure of the hot startup for serial entrepreneurs like Rabois. That said, he has also been an active angel investors for many years, with a wide-ranging portfolio, and is on many boards, including Yelp’s.

The choice of two very attractive alternatives is in stark contrast to the more tense situation for Rabois just a month ago, after accusations of sexual harassment arose related to a relationship he had with a Square employee.

Rabois has denied the allegations aimed at him and at the San Francisco payments company, which have not yet turned into a lawsuit, and has thus far been backed by Square. Rabois called the accusations by the employee “fiction” and a “shakedown.”

That said, due to the controversy around the serious workplace issue, he stepped down from his job as COO.

“At the end of the day, this is personally embarrassing to me, because when anyone’s life is exposed to a public forum, it creates quite a damaging situation,” said Rabois at the time in an interview with me. “As we looked at it, it was going to become a distraction that was going to hurt the company.”

Sitting in front of a spectacular view of San Francisco at his home this afternoon, former Square COO Keith Rabois looks spent.

He is just recovering from a bout of pneumonia, which would be bad enough, but it’s clear from his tense and unusually — for him — disheveled appearance that the sexual harassment claim made by a current male employee at the San Francisco payments startup has taken its toll on the typically hard-charging exec who is not known for suffering fools.

But, now, given a judgement he made to continue in a personal and physical relationship with that unnamed junior staffer after he was hired at Square, Rabois feels both foolish and also angry.

“At the end of the day, this is personally embarrassing to me, because when anyone’s life is exposed to a public forum, it creates quite a damaging situation,” said Rabois. “As we looked at it, it was going to become a distraction that was going to hurt the company.”

It appears as if he wanted to stay — he shrugs when directly asked about it, though he will not say so explicitly. But, Rabois finally agreed with Square’s top management, including CEO and founder Jack Dorsey, that is was better that he leave.

“It was very clear once this outrageous demand was made, instead of building great products, it would be all about that,” he said.

That said, after an internal investigation, the company is backing him in the expected filing of a lawsuit from the employee, who has threatened a panoply of explosive allegations against him and the company that Rabois said again are a “fiction.”

He declined to show me any texts or emails between the two, but did recount the relationship in a blog post on Tumblr earlier today.

Richard Curiale, outside counsel for Square and also Rabois, said that the company had been approached about two weeks ago by New York lawyer Steven Berger, claiming the company knew of and did nothing to stop sexual harassment by Rabois and demanding a multi-million dollar settlement.

Curiale said he found no evidence in his investigation so far of anything except a “welcome” relationship that ended. He had even agreed to make Rabois available for a deposition with Berger, but the offer was refused.

I have an email into Berger for comment, which has thus far been unanswered. But Square has said it will fight any lawsuit filed and is currently supporting Rabois.

“I have not as yet found any conduct that is illegal and therefore there is no adverse relationship between Keith and Square,” said Curiale. “We don’t pay for claims that have no merit to them, because it amounts to extortion.”

Perhaps so, but it also amounts to a very juicy story — the second such major blowup in Silicon Valley in a year. The other — now a lawsuit alleging gender discrimination and retaliation, and a countersuit — between the well-known venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins, and former partner Ellen Pao, is ongoing.

The particulars of the Rabois situation, per his side of the story, which he claims is supported by much evidence, is of a social and physical relationship with a man he met several years ago.

While he would not call their relationship dating, it was close and personal, including taking this man out with him to social events.

The problem came when he recommended this man for a job at Square and he was hired. The company was much smaller then, about 30 people, but as it grew Rabois insists he had no direct oversight of the employee and also did not treat him differently from others he managed at the company.

Rabois claims he gave him advice, as he did other employees, but neither helped or hindered the man in his efforts to advance.

The man and Rabois were still seeing each other socially until December, when the relationship cooled.

And then came the lawsuit threat two weeks ago, which Rabois said “stunned” him.

Square says that it was not aware of the personal relationship until the threat of the lawsuit; the employee has never made any complaints about Rabois to management.

Spokesman Ricardo Reyes said that “what we have here at most is bad judgement and we will defend ourselves.”

In this Rabois agrees, as he fields emails of support from his wide range of friends and colleagues in tech, where he is well known as an entrepreneur and angel investor.

“I have several good ideas of what I want to do next,” he said.

I am meeting with former COO Keith Rabois right now about the developing situation at Square, which involves a sexual harassment claim from a male employee still at the payments company.

The issue was first reported in The Wall Street Journal, just as Rabois posted his own account on the situation.

I’ll have more in a bit, but here is a pretty stunning statement he just gave me that also just published on his Tumblr blog, describing a personal relationship with an employee that went badly awry.

Rabois resigned yesterday as COO of the high-profile and heavily funded San Francisco startup:

The past few days have been the toughest, saddest, most frightening, and emotionally draining of my life. They have deeply affected me, both personally and professionally.

In May 2010, I met someone via mutual friends. With increasing frequency, we hung out, drank wine, and I helped prepare him for interviews with tech startups. As our friendship deepened, we spent more time together, and our relationship became physical. We regularly worked out at the gym, occasionally hung out at my home, and exchanged intimate, personal information, as people in similar relationships often do.

Several months after our relationship began, I recommended that he interview at Square. He went through the interview process and was ultimately hired. I did not interview him. I had no impact on his potential success at the company. At no point did he ever report directly to me, and I have seen his work product less than a handful of times.

Last week, a New York-based attorney threatened Square and myself with a lawsuit. I am told this lawsuit would allege that the relationship was not consensual, and would go on to accuse me of some pretty horrible things. I was told that only a payment of millions of dollars will make this go away, and that my career, my reputation, and my livelihood will be threatened if Square and I don’t pay up.

I realize that continuing any physical relationship after he began working at Square was poor judgment on my part. But let me be unequivocal with the facts: (1) The relationship was welcome. (2) Square did not know of the relationship before a lawsuit was threatened; it came as a complete surprise to the company. (3) He never received nor was denied any reward or benefits based on our relationship. And (4), I did not do the horrendous things I am told I may be accused of. While I have certainly made mistakes, this threat feels like a shakedown, and I will defend myself to the full extent of the law.

I decided to resign from Square so my colleagues could continue to do great work without the distraction that a lawsuit would most certainly bring. I deeply regret that I let my personal and professional lives to become intertwined, and I apologize to my colleagues and friends (at Square and elsewhere) who I’ve let down, and who will bear the brunt of some of the unnecessary, negative attention this situation will likely bring.

I am already working on something new and hope to announce that in February.

Here is a statement from Square about the developing situation:

“The first we heard of any of these allegations was when we received the threat of a lawsuit two weeks ago. We took these allegations very seriously and we immediately launched a full investigation to ascertain the facts. While we have not found evidence to support any claims, Keith exercised poor judgment that ultimately undermined his ability to remain an effective leader at Square. We accepted his resignation.”

In a major exec departure, Square COO Keith Rabois will be leaving the San Francisco payments company.

Square gave no other information about the sudden management change, but sources said disagreements between Rabois and CEO and founder Jack Dorsey were part of the reason for his exit.

It’s not clear if there were more serious issues between them, or whether the parting was related to a specific business problem. But the departure of the No. 2 exec is significant, so definitely more to come on what happened.

In a statement about the move, Rabois only said:

It is amazing what Square has accomplished since August of 2010. When I joined, there were 17 engineers all reporting flatly to Jack. The local coffee shop served as our interview room. Leading our amazing crew has been the most rewarding professional journey of my life. I am forever grateful to Jack, for his confidence in me and to each and every member of the team for allowing me to learn from them.

But every day matters. And it is better at this point for me to be doing something different every day.

As a result, I’ve decided to resign from Square. I am very excited about what lies ahead for the company. Square could not be better poised for greatness.

I will have more to share about my next opportunity soon.

Said Square’s Dorsey:

Today I accepted Keith’s resignation from Square. When he joined, we had fewer than 30 employees and under 1000 active merchants. Today, over 3 million individuals and businesses are able to accept credit cards with Square, processing over $10 billion annually. We couldn’t have done it without him and we wish him well in his next opportunity.

Square CFO Sarah Friar will become acting COO, Square said. It’s an unusual move to put an exec without a lot of deep operational experience in the second-most-important slot at Square, though the former Goldman Sachs analyst and Salesforce.com finance exec is clearly familiar with the heart of the company’s business.

The change in top management comes at a time of fast growth for the three-year-old Square, which completed a $200 million funding round in the fall that valued the company at $3.2 billion. At the time, the company said it had more than 400 employees and would grow by 100 more by year’s end.

Square is best known for allowing a range of small businesses, such as taxicab drivers, to accept credit and debit cards using their mobile phones. But it has also branched out into other mobile payments areas.

Besides his stint at Square, Rabois is a well-known angel investor in Silicon Valley, and serves on several boards, including Yelp’s. He has worked at many startups, too, including PayPal (acquired by eBay) and Slide (acquired by Google).

When pressed for a time frame in a recent interview, Rabois claimed that the transition could take place in as little as 18 months.

This would be a very fast pace, given that so many merchants have already invested thousands of dollars in their point-of-sale machines — not to mention other hurdles, such as getting employees up to speed on new systems.

Still, Rabois, whose business relies on this happening, is insistent.

“The era of standalone machines is over,” said Rabois, a former executive at PayPal. “Everyone will be migrating to iPads and comparable devices, which will be powered by an app — that is, hopefully, Square.”

We’ll see, but now Square has the money to try to make it so, finally confirming earlier today that it has raised a fourth round of capital. After months of rumors and an announcement last month that Starbucks would be one of its investors, the San Francisco-based payments company said it completed a monster round, totaling $200 million. This now puts it at a $3.25 billion valuation, according to sources. A spokesman would not confirm that amount.

The company said that it plans to use the money for more expansion. Over the past year, Square has already moved beyond handing out magnetic-swipe readers to anyone who wanted one to offering more robust experiences for both consumers and merchants. That now includes software on the Apple iPad, which acts like a register, and an application on the iPhone or Google Android phone that allows consumers to pay without using cash or plastic.

Square is not the only company that believes the transition will happen fast.

A survey by the National Retail Federation last fall found that while only 6 percent of retailers said they used mobile point-of-sale devices, half of the respondents said at the time that they planned to adopt such devices over the next 18 months. Additionally, about 75 percent of U.S. merchants said they intended to buy a tablet over the next year, according to market researcher NPD.

In the interview, which took place a few weeks ago, Rabois elaborated on his vision.

Essentially, Square’s biggest goal is to enable any merchant, regardless of their resources, to offer a mobile experience similar to the one Starbucks offers today through its application. In August, Starbucks announced that it was investing in Square, and was going to start using it to process all of its credit and debit transactions.

“Any merchant that is focused on customer service and the ambiance of their experience will be intrigued by what we offer,” Rabois said.

But if merchants are indeed eager to change out their legacy systems for something more digital, Square won’t be the only option for them to choose from. Other companies, such as eBay’s PayPal, Verifone and Intuit, also allow merchants to upgrade their systems without any additional hardware, as well as offering their own mobile-based solutions.

The payments company is perhaps best known for allowing small businesses, such as taco trucks and taxicab drivers, to accept credit and debit cards using their mobile phones. It is also well known because its CEO, Jack Dorsey, is also a founder of Twitter.

Square is issuing a modest three-paragraph press release this morning announcing the details, which is ironic given the round’s massive size.

A spokesman said that Square has raised more than $200 million in the round, although he would not confirm the company’s valuation. However, according to sources familiar with the deal, Square is now valued at an eye-popping $3.25 billion. That’s slightly less than the $4 billion valuation we reported it was seeking back in April.

Investors participating in the round include Citi Ventures, Rizvi Traverse Management and Starbucks Coffee Company.

The funding will help the company continue to grow, including plans for international expansion later this year.

In an interview several weeks ago, Square COO Keith Rabois said that the company plans to start marketing itself aggressively. It already has commercials on TV, and a wide-ranging deal with Starbucks announced last month will also help. Starbucks said then that it would invest $25 million into the company, and start using the funds to process all of its debit and credit transactions in the U.S. Starbucks will also allow its customers to pay for their lattes using Square’s consumer-facing app.

Rabois said then that he was certain that the transition from registers to iPads or other tablets will happen quickly.

To date, Square has raised around $340 million, money it will surely need if it hopes to disrupt something as large as the payments industry. So far, it has started to make a dent.

A year ago, Square had about 150 employees and was processing more than $1 billion on an annual basis. Today, it has 400-plus employees and is processing more than $8 billion a year. Rabois said he expects the company to hire 100 more employees by the end of the year.

Square’s valuation is rich by at least one historical measure. In a previous story, I compared the start-up to PayPal’s early days, noting:

PayPal, which was also looking to disrupt the banking industry by enabling peer-to-peer payments online, was sold for $1.5 billion to eBay in 2002, just months after going public at a valuation of nearly $800 million.

At the time it went public, the company was approximately doubling year over year, and had generated $103.7 million in 2001, its first full year of operations — slightly less than Square’s estimated revenue ($122 million).

Much like PayPal back then, Square faces intense competition, so making alliances with much larger companies or raising big war chests is critically important.

Square also faces stiff competition and pricing pressure from Intuit, eBay’s PayPal, Google, and other upstarts, like Pay Anywhere.

And it is still possible to compare Square to a modern-day PayPal. PayPal has said it is expecting to transact $10 billion in mobile payments volume this year, which is $2 billion more than what Square is processing on an annual basis. And, as with Square, nearly 100 percent of PayPal’s mobile transactions are occurring on the phone, but it is quickly ramping up its in-store payments business, too.

Charges associated with accepting credit cards have always been variable: A heavier month costs more in processing fees than a slower one, and that’s just the way it is.

Square, the mobile payments start-up founded by Twitter inventor Jack Dorsey, is aiming to address that. Today it announced that it is offering its small-business customers a flat monthly fee of $275 to accept payments. The monthly fee is an option to its original plan, under which merchants would pay a fee amounting to 2.75 percent of the charge amount.

Opt for the monthly fee option and there are no fees beyond that, Square COO Keith Rabois told AllThingsD.

Now, there are limits. The option is available only to small businesses, which Square defines as outfits that process less than $250,000 in payments per year. But as with any all-you-can-eat type of arrangement, the more of the service you consume, the lower your cost basis. If you’re swiping $250,000 worth of payments, you end up paying an effective rate of 1.32 percent, which works out to less than half of the cost of the original plan.

It’s also a lot lower than the 3 percent to 4 percent that typical small businesses tend to pay because they’re small and don’t have the heft to negotiate for lower fees with the big payment-processing houses. Then, Rabois says, there’s another 26 million businesses that don’t accept credit cards at all.

It’s just another example of how this start-up is aiming to challenge the conventional thinking of the payments business. No one would have guessed that regular people would want to carry a thumbnail-sized credit card reader around for settling up a restaurant check with friends. And last week year, Square announced a deal that lets businesses accept payments from Square users by name, without even having to dig their phones out of their pockets. And last week Square and Starbucks announced that the global coffee chain will use its Pay by Square mobile app will beginning this fall; it has also invested in Square, and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has joined Square’s board.

If the company is successful, it will have quadrupled its worth since raising $100 million at a $1 billion valuation only 10 months ago.

While that would be astonishing for a three-year-old company, it’s important to note that negotiations continue, and that investors could ultimately value the company at a slightly more modest number (hmm, like $3 billion?!).

A Square spokesman declined to comment.

Square, which was founded by Twitter inventor Jack Dorsey, has quickly made accepting credit cards via a mobile phone into a mainstream and affordable concept for small merchants.

Over the past year, it has quickly expanded beyond handing out magnetic-swipe readers to offer more robust experiences for both consumers and merchants, including software on the Apple iPad that acts like a register, and software on the iPhone that is a virtual wallet.

The payments method has received a warm reception from mostly small businesses, including taxicabs, food trucks, coffee shops and even lawyers and accountants.

The rumors of Square looking to raise more capital started spreading after Owen Thomas, formerly of the Daily Dot, noticed that Dorsey and Square’s COO Keith Rabois were in Boston and Baltimore, where many institutional investors are based. Thomas called Legg Mason, which confirmed it was looking at the San Francisco company.

Previous investors in Square’s three rounds, totaling roughly $137 million, include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Tiger Global Management, Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures, Visa and well-known entrepreneur Richard Branson.

The big question is whether Square will be able to demand such a hefty valuation.

To determine that, based on what is known about the company, I did some back-of-the napkin calculations to come up with its annual revenue.

Last month, the company said it is now processing $4 billion in annual transactions. Since we know that Square charges 2.75 percent per swiped transaction, and 3.5 percent plus 15 cents per keyed-in transaction, we can start to get a better picture of its finances.

Let’s assume that a quarter of the company’s transactions are keyed in — which demands the higher rate. That would mean the company’s revenue would total nearly $83 million for swiped transactions, and $35 million for keyed-in transactions. Because of the additional 15-cent fee per transaction, let’s add another $15 million (which might be generous, but would break down to 100 million transactions at $10 apiece).

In all, the company’s annual revenue would then be close to $122 million.

Most, but not all of that revenue, is then handed over to the credit card companies for processing fees.

To be sure, the company has grown quickly since its inception, and has its eyes set on the very large point-of-sales market. This year, Square said it had plans to expand internationally, and has just hired a new executive from PayPal to take the lead on the effort. In the future it could also generate revenue from advertising or other loyalty programs, although it does not today.

But, by at least one historical measure, the valuation is rich beyond belief.

PayPal, which was also looking to disrupt the banking industry by enabling peer-to-peer payments online, was sold for $1.5 billion to eBay in 2002, just months after going public at a valuation of nearly $800 million.

At the time it went public, the company was roughly doubling year over year and had generated $103.7 million in 2001, its first full year of operations — or slightly less than Square’s estimated revenues.

Much like PayPal back then, Square faces intense competition, making alliances with much larger companies or raising big war chests critically important.

Square faces stiff competition and pricing pressure from Intuit, eBay’s PayPal, Google and other upstarts, like Pay Anywhere.

Still, it has made a splash that is seeing major reverberations around the sector, which a big valuation will make larger still.

Gogobot, the social travel site, said it has raised $15 million in a funding round led by Redpoint Ventures.

Sources said the valuation for the Silicon Valley start-up was around $70 million.

Gogobot said it would use the funds to expand its business. Battery Ventures and CrunchFund also participated in the financing round. Currently, the company’s revenue is mostly tied to lead generation based on its user recommendations.

“We really think we have a lot of momentum in the space and we want to keeping pressing forward in pushing social travel,” said Gogobot CEO and co-founder Travis Katz. “Travelers want to share their experiences and it is a trend that is only getting larger.”

To compete with rivals such as TripAdvisor, Gogobot recently released a number of new features, such as an Apple iPhone app and Trip Portfolio, a scrapbook experience via collections about different destinations.

The company, which launched late last year, has raised $4 million in venture funding from Battery Ventures, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors and angel investors Chris DeWolfe, Keith Rabois and Oren Ze’ev.

Here is a video interview I did with Katz last year, talking about the site, followed by the official press release:

Gogobot Announces $15 Million in Funding Led by Redpoint Ventures

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (November 3, 2011) – Gogobot (www.Gogobot.com), the world’s largest social travel site, announced today that it has completed a $15 million round of funding led by Redpoint Ventures. Gogobot will use this new financing to expand its global footprint through marketing, partnerships, and outreach.

Gogobot transforms how we explore new places and capture and share our travel experiences by allowing users to harness the power of their social networks to exchange trusted travel advice and share trip plans and rich visual travel memories. This announcement comes on the heels of the launch of Gogobot’s mobile app available for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, which is currently a Top 10 Travel App in 31 countries around the world.

“With its unique offering and seasoned management team, Gogobot is the industry leader in the social travel space. We believe with its vision and timely and unique service, Gogobot is poised for exceptional growth,” said Satish Dharmaraj, general partner of Redpoint Ventures.

Gogobot users can browse reviews from friends as well as share their photos, reviews and other details about the places they stayed, dined, and traveled on the Gogobot site. Gogobot automatically packages these elements into magazine-style albums, allowing friends to experience your travels with you in real time, see a map of where you were when you caught that sunset, or even make a reservation at the hotel where you stayed.

“Travel is all about discovering new experiences and sharing them with your friends and family,” said Travis Katz, Gogobot co-founder and CEO. “With this new funding, Gogobot aims to continue to grow and pave the way for a new era of travel — harnessing social media to provide users with trusted, insightful, and enriching reviews at the tip of your finger.”

Battery Ventures and CrunchFund also participated in the financing round.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111103/first-class-ticket-time-social-travel-start-up-gogobot-raises-15-million-in-funding/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111018/gogobot-goes-mobile-with-new-iphone-app/ http://allthingsd.com/20111018/gogobot-goes-mobile-with-new-iphone-app/#comments Tue, 18 Oct 2011 16:00:30 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=133344

The innovative social travel site Gogobot is unveiling its Apple iPhone app today, which will give users of the service the ability to post from a location immediately and also to see where friends have been.

In an interview with me last week, co-founder and CEO Travis Katz said that the move is an important one for the Silicon Valley start-up, since on-the-go trip recommendations using smartphones have become increasingly important to travelers.

“You live away from your laptop most of your time, and especially on trips,” he said. “But you also want to preserve those experiences.”

The new travel app, which is now only available on the Apple iPhone, populates to Gogobot’s Trip Portfolio, a scrapbook experience via collections about different destinations. You can also send postcards from the app — a la Instagram — to your collections.

Gogobot, which launched late last year, has raised $4 million in venture funding from Battery Ventures, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors and angel investors Chris DeWolfe, Keith Rabois and Oren Ze’ev.

Katz said Gogobot would eventually build on other mobile platforms, such as Google Android.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111018/gogobot-goes-mobile-with-new-iphone-app/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111010/square-makes-it-easier-for-big-businesses-to-sign-up/ http://allthingsd.com/20111010/square-makes-it-easier-for-big-businesses-to-sign-up/#comments Mon, 10 Oct 2011 18:00:46 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=130690 Square is eliminating one more hurdle that may have been a turnoff for bigger businesses looking at adopting its service, which allows people to collect payments using a mobile phone and card reader.

In a phone interview, Square’s Keith Rabois explained that the company would no longer hold back a business’s funds for up to a month if they processed more than $1,000 as a new customer.

Originally, he said when new businesses signed up they would have to provide additional verification in order to receive all of their sales by the next business day. Anything over $1,000 could be held for up to a month. That could easily happen for a plumber, or a small jewelry business that processed potentially large transactions.

The measure was originally in place to reduce fraud, but Rabois said, “Now that we’ve been commercially available for a year, we can now spot statistical anomalies.”

The San Francisco-based company, which is backed heavily by Visa and other investors, has been on a major growth spurt during its first year in business.

Rabois said it’s all about making the service really simple to use for individuals, small and even large businesses.

The company is now processing more than $2 billion a year on an annualized basis, and has fully authorized 800,000 merchants to use its payments network to date.

To put that in context, Rabois said Visa and MasterCard have authorized 8.2 million merchants. “In a year, we’ve been able to offer payments services to the equivalent of 10 percent of Visa and MasterCard’s network.”

What’s more, he said 70 percent of its users have never accepted credit cards before, so they are expanding the number of merchants accepting payments.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111010/square-makes-it-easier-for-big-businesses-to-sign-up/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110825/max-levchin-to-leave-google-as-slide-is-shut-down/ http://allthingsd.com/20110825/max-levchin-to-leave-google-as-slide-is-shut-down/#comments Fri, 26 Aug 2011 00:35:07 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=114188 Slide, the social apps company that Google bought just over a year ago for about $200 million, will be dissolved, and its well-regarded leader Max Levchin will depart Google, sources close to the matter told AllThingsD.

Google confirmed the departure today.

“Max has decided to leave Slide and Google to pursue other opportunities, and we wish him the best,” said a Google spokesperson. “Most of the team from Slide will remain at Google to work on other opportunities.”

After being acquired, Slide had operated as an independent unit out of Google’s San Francisco office, maintaining existing apps like SuperPoke Pets and experimenting with new ones such as messaging app Disco and photo-sharing app Photovine, which was released only last week.

The apps, none of which were extremely popular, will be sunsetted over the next few months.

The news was announced to employees at an all-staff meeting in San Francisco this afternoon, sources said. A source said that some of the Slide team is expected to land at YouTube, which is also operated independently within Google. Slide has about 100 employees, with not too much attrition in the last year, said that source.

Although Slide as an independent start-up had not matched its lofty expectations and valuations — at as much as $500 million in a 2008 funding round — its acquisition brought Google some key assets: Social Web expertise at a time when it was dearly needed, and Levchin, who famously founded PayPal.

But that was last August. Since then, Google has entrusted its social efforts to two of its existing executives, Vic Gundotra and Bradley Horowitz, who led the team that created Google+. Levchin was left on the fringes with Slide as an autonomous subsidiary, reporting to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

In addition, at the time Slide was bought, Google CEO Larry Page had not yet reassumed leadership of the company he co-founded. In April, Page consolidated and streamlined Google’s product structure into seven distinct units. And even though the social team may have been the natural fit for Slide, the two were not integrated.

In addition to Levchin, Slide head of product Jared Fliesler also plans to leave Google, and has accepted a position with former Slide colleague Keith Rabois at payments start-up Square, sources said. (Rabois had joined Google only very briefly after Slide was bought, before jumping ship to work with Twitter co-founder and creator Jack Dorsey at Square.)

Levchin has also been an active angel investor, is chairman of the board of Yelp, and — congrats to him and his wife — is expecting his second child next month.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110825/max-levchin-to-leave-google-as-slide-is-shut-down/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110720/gogobot-unveils-flipboard-like-web-travel-scrapbook/ http://allthingsd.com/20110720/gogobot-unveils-flipboard-like-web-travel-scrapbook/#comments Wed, 20 Jul 2011 13:00:42 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=100304

The social travel start-up, Gogobot, has launched an eye-catching new feature to its site.

Called Trip Portfolio, Gogobot is likening the offering (which you can see in the image above) to a scrapbook experience via collections about different destinations on the fly.

Get it? A travel site and on the fly!

But it seems to be more a way to make sharing pages look a lot like a Web version of Flipboard, the innovative social reading app for the Apple iPad.

“We think this gives people a better way to share the narrative and concept of their trip, rather than just through slideshows,” said Gogobot co-founder and CEO Travis Katz.

Gogobot, which launched late last year, has raised $4 million in venture funding from Battery Ventures, Google Pooh-Bah Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors and angel investors Chris DeWolfe, Keith Rabois and Oren Ze’ev.

Here’s the official press release from Gogobot about Trip Portfolio:

Gogobot Launches Scrapbooking for the Digital Age

Unique new feature transforms capturing and sharing your vacation via the social graph

SAN FRANCISCO, July 20, 2011 — Gogobot, the fast-growing social travel site that is revolutionizing the way people plan trips by offering users personalized travel recommendations via their social networks, launched today a new and unique feature, the Trip Portfolio. The first of its kind, the Trip Portfolio allows Gogobot users to create beautiful, stylized digital scrapbooks to capture and share all aspects of their travels with friends and families.

“Our travels are important to us, creating memories that are deeply personal and rich with emotion. Until today, however, people have been limited to sharing these memories through online photo albums where the images are preserved, but the context and narrative that gives them meaning is lost. Today, Gogobot takes the world beyond the photo album, launching a revolutionary digital scrapbook that allows users to curate and share all aspects of their travels, packaged into a super user-friendly interactive, crisp and clean design,” said Travis Katz, Gogobot co-founder and CEO.

Called “Collections,” the new feature allows users to share their adventures in a format rich with color and context; an enhanced scrapbook for the digital age. Users can share their photos, reviews and other details about the places they stayed, dined, and traveled from the Gogobot site. The collections also allow users to seamlessly integrate their activities from other social media sites — including their check-ins on Facebook and Foursquare — and professional photos from Gogobot. All of these elements are pages about each place, allowing friends to learn more about the places you visited, see on a map where you were when you caught that sunset, or even make a reservation at the hotel where you stayed. These elements are presented in a clean and elegant format with an interactive map that allows users to share vacations with their social networks in a streamlined, beautifully packaged layout, while making it easy for friends to use this information to plan their own trips.

“Why waste time uploading dozens of untagged, uncaptioned photos? Now you can share all your favorite places and memorable moments in rich detail in half the time. Gogobot’s Trip Portfolio lets you show off the most memorable moments from your trip and helps friends plan their next trip, too,” said Katz.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110720/gogobot-unveils-flipboard-like-web-travel-scrapbook/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110502/meet-evan-reas-of-lal-and-his-proximity-based-social-graph-for-colleges/ http://allthingsd.com/20110502/meet-evan-reas-of-lal-and-his-proximity-based-social-graph-for-colleges/#comments Tue, 03 May 2011 01:20:07 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=6185 The start-up LikeALittle, or LAL, had fended off NetworkEffect’s reportorial advances for weeks. Funny, considering the site helps people flirt with one another.

But last week we were granted access to the Palo Alto “hacker house” where the recently seed-funded LAL team has set up shop to expand its early success into a larger vision. No, LAL is not turning its flirting site into a dating site, but rather becoming a way for people to interact with others who are nearby, as co-founder and CEO Evan Reas described in a video interview embedded here.

LAL, which started at Stanford University last fall and now is live at 450 different colleges, gets 250,000 page views per day for its message boards and Web chat service. Reas estimates 75 percent of Stanford students have used the site. But total user numbers are slightly hard to ascertain, he noted, because LAL allows people to post and chat anonymously.

Reas promises that LAL’s grand vision will become more apparent in the coming weeks, but for now here’s why he’s been able to bend investors’ ears:

• A dynamic social graph determined by users’ locations seems like an alternative to the static real-name-based Facebook social graph.
• Flirting provides enticing content for both participants and voyeurs.
• When it comes to virality, densely populated college campuses seem to be a match waiting to be lit.

LAL participated in the most recent class of Y Combinator and raised a seed round led by Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz, as was reported by TechCrunch.

Here’s the full list of investors, provided by LAL: Marc Andreessen, Paul Buchheit, Ron Conway, Scott Cook, Charles River Ventures led by Saar Gur, Matrix Partners led by Josh Hannah, Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary, David King, Yuri Milner, Shervin Pishevar, Brian Pokorny, Keith Rabois, Naval Ravikant, David Sacks and Y Combinator.

Reas told us LikeALittle was probably the seventh or eighth idea he and his co-founders Prasanna Sankaranarayanan and Shubham Mittal prototyped under the header Hawthorne Labs. The quick viral success of LAL at Stanford indicated to the three that they might have found their elusive “billion-dollar idea,” so they stuck with it, Reas said. Prior to Hawthorne Labs, Reas had been a co-founder of ProFounder and received his MBA from Stanford.

Here’s our video chat with Reas, shot in the “hacker house” backyard.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110502/meet-evan-reas-of-lal-and-his-proximity-based-social-graph-for-colleges/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20110429/verifone-claims-victory-now-that-square-is-adding-encryption-to-its-card-readers/ http://allthingsd.com/20110429/verifone-claims-victory-now-that-square-is-adding-encryption-to-its-card-readers/#comments Fri, 29 Apr 2011 23:35:16 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=4997 A day after Square announced it had received an investment from Visa, it said it would be adding an additional level of encryption into the card reader that plugs into smartphones.

But don’t read too much into that.

The decision has everything to do with obeying Visa’s best practices and nothing to do with the accusations of security flaws raised last month by VeriFone, the 900-pound gorilla in the space.

Does it mean VeriFone’s concerns are just a teeny-weeny bit valid?

“Absolutely not,” said a Square spokesperson. “Of course, Square meets or exceeds all current industry standards. We are confident that Square already reduces the overall risk in the payments ecosystem….As Square is everywhere, we wanted to work with Visa to raise the bar on security for the next decade.”

The feather-ruffling started last month when VeriFone issued a fairly bold attack on Square, the San Francisco venture-based company founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. VeriFone wrote an open letter to the industry alleging security flaws in the product and also produced a video detailing how easy it would be to steal a cardholder’s information using a Square card reader.

Square’s response was that the claims were not fair or accurate and that they overlooked all of the protections already built into your credit card.

A lot of comments on this site and others felt the attack was unnecessarily harsh and pointed to VeriFone’s insecurity with their position in the market. While admittedly unconventional, VeriFone’s CEO Doug Bergeron explained his reasons in a lengthy interview. “We collectively need to create new technology to reduce fraud, whether you are a venture-backed business or a big business. We are both responsible for our own decisions and should be able to fend for ourselves,” he said.

Now, Square seems to be caving on the core issues of that debate. And VeriFone is claiming victory. Of course.

In a statement, Paul Rasori, VeriFone’s SVP of marketing, said: ”It appears that Visa’s investment in Square would not have happened without a commitment from Square to address the lack of security of their payment card readers. The industry heard our concern, and Square finally decided to take security into consideration by including encryption on their mobile payment device later this year.”

The security concerns were addressed yesterday in a blog post by Visa and another by Square’s COO Keith Rabois.

In Visa’s post, it announced that it had come up with its own best practices for the mobile industry for merchants, software developers and device manufacturers to follow. One of the many things it called for was encryption of cardholder data at the the card reader. “We are pleased that Square, the Jack Dorsey start-up that enables small businesses to accept card payments through mobile devices, has expressed its support of Visa’s best practices and its intent to adopt them.”

Rabois wrote: “The adoption of best practices will help increase trust in innovative payment solutions. Of course, Square complies with all current industry standards, and we are committed to meeting or exceeding industry guidelines as they evolve–all while keeping our card reader free.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110429/verifone-claims-victory-now-that-square-is-adding-encryption-to-its-card-readers/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20110406/topguest-hustles-its-way-into-making-travel-loyalty-pay-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20110406/topguest-hustles-its-way-into-making-travel-loyalty-pay-video/#comments Wed, 06 Apr 2011 17:17:57 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=5210 Topguest co-founder and CEO Geoff Lewis says he figured out a way to hack the near-impossible problem of hiring engineers in Silicon Valley: find them in Australia.

Apparently the U.S. visa process coming from Down Under is relatively pain-free, and at a cost of “a few thousand dollars” Lewis now has four Australians and himself, a Canadian, working on Topguest. “No Americans,” he said as a point of pride in an interview at his San Francisco office this week.

Lewis’ explanation for how a small, less-than-a-year-old start-up with relatively few users can score deals with the likes of Virgin America, Hilton and InterContinental Hotels Group is similar: “Just hustling.”

Topguest ties customers’ geo-located social media activity with existing loyalty rewards programs. “We have no loyalty or travel domain expertise,” Lewis said.

Topguest doesn’t have its own check-in app, but it plugs into users’ Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Instagram accounts to pull in their posts. For instance, getting the most likes on Instagram for a picture taken at a U.S. airport this week will earn Topguest users 1,000 Virgin America Elevate points (the minimum amount needed to buy a flight is 2,500).

In comparison to the fleeting attraction of a nearby special offer on Foursquare, Lewis said, “deals and discounts aren’t loyalty.”

Lewis said Facebook is by far the most-used check-in service by Topguest users, and the company’s recent Instagram integration has doubled unique visitors to its site.

This weekend, Topguest is launching a partnership with Caesars Entertainment Corp in Las Vegas that will earn users rewards points to spend at the company’s 1,000 venues.

Topguest makes money by receiving an activation fee for users who participate in loyalty programs (so far 10 percent of its users have signed up for a new loyalty program), as well as a monthly fee in some cases.

Ultimately, said Lewis, Topguest wants to act as a personalized concierge tool for its users, helping them make travel reservations to earn and spend loyalty points.

The company does have to fend off users who game the system by checking into multiple hotels in order to accrue more points. Lewis said Topguest has banned hundreds of users already for such abuse.

Personally, I might tend toward the opposite inclination and resist publicly checking into places where I plan to spend the night. But earning miles for airport check-ins? Sure, why not!

Topguest raised $2 million in Series A funding last year from investors including Founders Fund, as well as angels such as Ron Conway, Keith Rabois, Jeff Clavier and Naval Ravikant. After closing the funding, the company moved from New York City to San Francisco.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110406/topguest-hustles-its-way-into-making-travel-loyalty-pay-video/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110324/twitters-long-hunt-for-product-leadership/ http://allthingsd.com/20110324/twitters-long-hunt-for-product-leadership/#comments Thu, 24 Mar 2011 18:25:52 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=4760 Twitter has spent months searching for a product leader, and had multiple high-profile potential hires turn it down. But it is starting to make some progress.

This morning the company confirmed it had hired Satya Patel, a former AdSense product manager who was for the last four years focused on software and Internet investments as a partner at Battery Ventures, to be a director of product management.

Patel (pictured at right) is to start April 4, Twitter said. His hire was first reported by Fortune.

Patel will be a product leader, but not the product leader.

That top spot is still unfilled, and has been since Jason Goldman left the company at the end of last year.

Twitter is actively trying to persuade co-founder and Chairman Jack Dorsey to take a more active product role, as was reported yesterday by Business Insider. Dorsey, however, has a day job as CEO at Square, the payments company he co-founded in 2009.

Other than Dorsey, Twitter seems to have a fixation on hiring Google people.

Neal Mohan (pictured at left), a VP of product management at Google who runs DoubleClick, had also recently been in late-stage discussions to join Twitter, but he was persuaded to stay at Google, according to multiple sources. Mohan is a very significant player at Google and would have been a big catch for Twitter. However, having a monetization person lead Twitter’s product would have likely been a source of internal friction, those sources noted.

(Related: Late last year Twitter added former DoubleClick CEO David Rosenblatt to its board.)

Before Mohan, Sundar Pichai, Google’s VP of product management in charge of Chrome and Chrome OS, made a similar choice after being recruited for Twitter’s top product spot. Pichai decided to stay at Google in January after Google made him a large competitive counteroffer.

For Patel (and Dorsey, if that develops), Twitter product management would not be their only job. If Dorsey were to return to Twitter, he could potentially cede Square leadership to COO Keith Rabois, an experienced leader from stints at PayPal and Square and one of Silicon Valley’s leading angel investors. Meanwhile, Patel will maintain some of his board seats and remain a venture partner at Battery, as reported by Fortune.

The big allure of Dorsey is not only that the idea for Twitter sprang from his brain, but that he has been involved with the company all along, especially since last fall when Dick Costolo replaced Evan Williams as CEO. That would make him a lot easier to integrate than an outsider, sources noted.

Twitter’s employees and investors alike speak with admiration of Dorsey and express wistfulness that the company’s true product visionary was forced out in 2008 when Williams took over. Dorsey’s homecoming would be kind of messianic.

Meanwhile, Williams is much less involved in Twitter these days, having spent much of the winter in Tahoe, though he did come by the office yesterday to interview Lady Gaga.

However, Twitter hasn’t just been waiting in a holding pattern for a product head honcho to show up; others at the company have been working on various interesting features and products that will soon launch, said multiple Twitter sources. And importantly, the company recently migrated and stabilized its infrastructure, a necessary and overdue upgrade that is probably a good thing to do before any major product launch.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110324/twitters-long-hunt-for-product-leadership/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20110225/mobile-social-games-developer-tinyco-raises-a-big-first-round/ http://allthingsd.com/20110225/mobile-social-games-developer-tinyco-raises-a-big-first-round/#comments Fri, 25 Feb 2011 16:34:55 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=3107 San Francisco-based Brooklyn Packet has raised $18 million in a first round of funding to make social games for mobile phones.

As part of the round, the company is changing its name to TinyCo, which is in no way representative of its ambitions.

The game-maker, which launched in 2009, has already reached profitability after releasing three iPhone titles, including Tiny Chef and Tap Resort. What’s more, it believes it has what it takes to build a $1 billion company over the next two to three years.

Those aggressive plans is likely what attracted big-name investors, like Andreessen Horowitz, which led TinyCo’s $18 million round, along with several super angels, including Ron Conway and Keith Rabois.

TinyCo builds mobile games that are free and supported by in-game virtual goods.

If it sounds familiar, that’s because it is.

In the past four years, Zynga has built a company valued close to $10 billion by monetizing games on Facebook through virtual goods.

TinyCo’s two founders Suleman “Suli” Ali and Ian Spivey, who met each other in high school, said mobile has the potential to spawn great companies in the same way that Facebook did.

“The mobile opportunity is huge,” Spivey said. “Android is going to have 100 million new devices this year, and iOS will add 50 million more. Mobile is where Facebook was two years ago.”

Still, investors and entrepreneurs have been optimistic about the potential for mobile games before, and it hasn’t always gone so smoothly.

For Marc Andreessen, he admits mobile games have been “out of favor” for him for years.

“This is our first important investment in the mobile gaming category,” he said. “You needed the iPhone and other platforms, like Android and Windows Phone, WebOS and others, to make it happen. The market wasn’t ready before, and it didn’t matter how good the developers were.”

The company, which has 37 employees, is working next on launching games for Android, just in time for Google’s launch of in-app purchases, which is coming to the marketplace soon.

Andreessen said TinyCo is a “classic example of a startup with outstanding entrepreneurs. We are the first money in and its already profitable. That’s an incredible achievement with no investment.”

So, does TinyCo have the ability to be the Zynga of mobile?

Andreessen, who is also an investor in Zynga, wasn’t willing to go there, but added: “There’s going to be a whole series of mobile-centric franchises that are going to be much different compared to companies that built on the Web. Mobile is a first-class opportunity.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110225/mobile-social-games-developer-tinyco-raises-a-big-first-round/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110216/1000memories-funded-by-greylock-angels/ http://allthingsd.com/20110216/1000memories-funded-by-greylock-angels/#comments Wed, 16 Feb 2011 12:00:49 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=3642 1000Memories, the social media site for friends and family to memorialize loved ones who’ve passed away, is disclosing today it has raised $3 million worth of funding, including a Series A round led by Greylock Partners.

The money was actually raised last fall in two rounds after the company completed the Y Combinator program, but for whatever reason it’s been kept under wraps. NetworkEffect took the opportunity to talk with co-founder Rudy Adler about his year-old start-up this week.

“The Internet was missing a past tense,” is Adler’s quip to explain the motivation for 1000Memories. The site offers a central place for mourners to contribute pictures, stories and the like, with the promise of becoming a permanent collaborative obituary and eulogy.

Sites like Facebook don’t have a great way of dealing with people who pass away, because they are designed for living participants, Adler said. Creating accounts for dead people can be awkward, but perhaps less so on a dedicated, nicely designed site.

Future premium products for 1000Memories may include custom domains, physical memory books, personalized designs and additional storage, Adler said. The company currently helps its users do things like rip and post DVDs, in part because they are often much older and less tech savvy than the average social media user.

1000Memories recently launched a groups feature that was used to memorialize those killed in the Egyptian protests. It went viral, with more than 400,000 page views, Adler said.

In addition to Greylock, participants in the $2.5 million Series A round included Caterina Fake, Ron Conway, Keith Rabois, Mike Maples, Paul Buchheit and Chris Sacca. It came through just a couple of months after 1000Memories had raised an angel round worth $500,000.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110216/1000memories-funded-by-greylock-angels/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110207/squares-jack-dorsey-wants-to-replace-everything-from-the-receipt-to-the-register/ http://allthingsd.com/20110207/squares-jack-dorsey-wants-to-replace-everything-from-the-receipt-to-the-register/#comments Mon, 07 Feb 2011 16:46:46 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=2412 From the San Francisco Chronicle offices where some of the newspaper’s local ad sales used to be, we caught up with Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and CEO of Square, which is working on ways to accept credit card payments using a mobile phone.

Within a few minutes, I’d paid Square’s COO Keith Rabois $2 after he swiped my credit card through a small plastic dongle attached to his iPhone. I signed the screen with the tip of my finger and received a receipt by email to confirm the purchase.

(They did not repeat this transaction more than 10 million times to recently raise $27.5 million, they promised).

For small-business owners, like an artist at a farmer’s market or even a family at a Saturday morning yard sale, this could make the difference in closing a sale, especially as our society moves away from cash and more to plastic.

Rabois says 50,000 to 60,000 new users are signing up a month, and Square is processing millions of dollars a week.

It is also convenience–at a price.

Square charges 2.75 percent plus 15 cents for swiped transactions, and slightly more if you type in a credit card number. For $100, that translates to a $2.90 service charge.

The model doesn’t replace the need for Visa and MasterCard, but does compete head-on with services being built by those financial incumbents, as well as others like Intuit, PayPal and the wireless carriers.

On the merchant side, it’s easy, too. Download the app to either an iPhone, iPad or Android device, create an account and receive a Square accessory in the mail. On the user side, your card will be swiped by a small proprietary reader, and you will be emailed a receipt.

Dorsey, who slowed down long enough to talk to us for a few minutes, is the visionary behind the operation, which sees way more applications for what it is building–from redefining the receipt to getting rid of the register.

EMoney: Last month, Square raised $27.5 million in fresh capital. What’s the plan for 2011?

Dorsey: The plan includes growing the team, both in engineering and design, and increasing the awareness of Square, which means expanding the user base to the plumber, the piano teacher and the dog walker. As for product innovation, we will do a lot with the receipt. “Let’s make it interactive instead of something we throw away.”

How can the receipt experience improve?

Dorsey: Making payments “has never been treated as a product. It’s a burden, and yet it’s such a common human activity.” At the heart of it, the receipt process is a publishing platform, he said. “We can dramatically improve what you take away.” Currently, a Square receipt includes a picture of the merchant, a description of what you purchased, the amount and a map of where you bought it. When buying a cup of coffee, why not include information about the coffee beans, and link to an article in Wikipedia? A more advanced version would eliminate the need to carry around 20 coffee cards and be intelligent enough to give you a 10th cup free.

Do you think you can replace the register?

Dorsey: “Yes. They are terrible.”

How?

Dorsey: “It’s a pain, and it takes forever.” Long lines are created in cafés, and waiters must come back with the check. “We aren’t just accepting credit cards–we are simplifying the friction from the payment system. No one has done this.” Square is looking at making an all-in-one payment and point-of-sale device that could be as simple as an iPad. And, with one swipe of the card, a patron could broadcast his or her location on Twitter and receive loyalty points.

What about innovation on the merchant side?

Dorsey: “There’s a lot of attention on the payers, but not the merchants….Every Silicon Valley company has a dashboard–it’s called Google Analytics–but a lot of small- to medium-size businesses have no access to data at all.” A point-of-sale system could cost $15,000, and still it would not track how many lattes were sold vs. blueberry muffins. But what if a system could be built that could track this and show whether to draw correlations between the two? “Data simplifies everything,” he said.

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