Not to say Formspring is making a business out of Web Q&A–yet. But Wednesday it is announcing a Series A round of $11.5 million led by Redpoint Partners. And it’s also releasing a self-service product called “the Respond button” that allows publishers to solicit responses to their content through a simple integration with Formspring’s API.

The Series A round, which also included Baseline Ventures and others, comes on the heels of Formspring raising $2.5 million from a large group of angels and Polaris Ventures last March. That prompted the company to move its headquarters to San Francisco from Indianapolis, where it had spun out of online form provider FormStack.

Of all the various Q&A startups, Formspring’s product is probably the closest to personal blogging. A user signs up for an account and then visitors can ask her questions, usually about herself.

$14 million is a ton of money, especially for a site that’s only a year old with no revenue. But Formspring CEO Ade Olonoh said the company now has 20 million registered users and 10 million daily answers to questions from its community, something he contended takes a lot of infrastructure and additional developers to support.

The new Respond button product will be free to publishers, but it will require users to log into a Formspring account to participate. Launch partners include the Huffington Post and AskMen (pictured).

Previously, Formspring questions existed in a world unto themselves of mostly casual conversations about users’ favorite movies and the like. Olonoh described the Respond button as a paradigm shift because it will introduce topic prompts from outside content.

The San Francisco-based company has accumulated 550,000 iPhone downloads and 300,000 monthly Web site visitors, and has just released an Android app. It launched only last year.

Foodspotting is competing with the likes of Yelp, which is known for restaurant reviews but also includes all sorts of local businesses. However, Foodspotting allows only positive reviews of food, with the idea that a user would show up at a restaurant or in a neighborhood and glance at the app to quickly zero in on the best dishes to order.

Check out this recent NetworkEffect post on the bountiful competition in the sharing-pictures-of-food sector.

Foodspotting had just raised $750,000 from Felicis Ventures, 500 Startups and High Line Venture Partners in July 2010.

We have a video interview with Foodspotting CEO Alexa Andrzejewski that I’ll post later on, but unfortunately the press embargo on this announcement was broken before I’d encoded the video. In our interview, Andrzejewski justified how such a seemingly narrow project, especially in such a competitive market, could have broad appeal.

Let’s get this out of the way right now–WakeMate co-founder Arun Gupta said the start-up is finally shipping all pre-orders of the long-awaited sleep tracking gadget.

Gupta said, “Our goal is to fill all pre-orders by Christmas.”

And I can even verify that the unit exists, since I have been using one for a week now.

So why all the skepticism?

Because WakeMate–which began as an idea for a smart alarm clock back in 2006 and graduated out of the Y Combinator incubator in summer of 2009–has had more than a few delays in delivering product.

To be fair, the tiny company might have bit off a fair amount to chew. WakeMate chose a solution to the sleep-tracking problem that required it to build original hardware, a main Web application, as well as apps for Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and Research in Motion’s BlackBerry.

Thus, Gupta describes the first version of its product as “really, a public beta.”

And, WakeMate is indeed a little rough around the edges.

For example, the unit itself–with its semi-exposed electronics and shrink-tube wrapper–looks a little more like something hacked together on top of one of the mini DIY Arduino boards than it does a finished consumer electronics device.

But if you have any experience programming microcontrollers, you might appreciate the sort of sophistication that goes into coordinating this sleepy symphony of data gathering.

(Pardon us for a minute, while I get a little über-geeky and explain how the WakeMate wristband works. If this doesn’t concern you, feel free to fast-forward a few paragraphs to get to Gupta’s predictions for WakeMate’s future.)

When you flick the small switch on the WakeMate wristband, just prior to going to sleep, the device connects via Bluetooth to your iOS, Android or BlackBerry device.

You then open the WakeMate app and enter a 20-minute window during which you’d like to be woken.

The app talks to the wristband and transmits that time information. Then, both app and device enter a sort of low-power state. At this stage, the WakeMate becomes little more than a data logger.

There is a fairly standard, solid-state, three-axis accelerometer on board, much like the one that allows you to “shake to shuffle” your iPhone.

WakeMate then spits out three fields of data–X,Y and Z axis readings–40 times per second, which are stored in its flash memory all night.

That means an eight-hour sleep cycle will produce about 3.5 million unique data points, not including metadata.

The onboard clock–for the computer, not for human time-telling–waits until your pre-selected 20-minute window and then figures out, based on frequency and severity of wrist movement, when you are closest to being awake on your own.

When that moment comes, it wakes the Bluetooth connection, connects to the phone, sounds the alarm and starts uploading the data it collected all night directly to the phone and immediately sends the information to WakeMate’s servers.

And, not to worry, if the WakeMate dies mid-sleep, the phone knows to sound the alarm anyway.

It is quite a concert that needs to be played flawlessly for connectivity and battery life to remain intact.

Impressive data tricks aside, the world in which WakeMate was conceived looked a little different from the one into which it has been born, and that means a different set of competitive realities.

When WakeMate left Y Combinator, the world of iOS device-connected movement sensors was limited to the Nike Fit, which links running performance via a shoe-attached device.

It was also a world without Fitbit, another popular activity and health tracker.

And, unlike now, there were no sleep apps claiming to do what WakeMate does.

But now, even with all the new rivals, Gupta believes WakeMate still has the edge.

He explained: “In the early days of sleep-tracking studies, doctors decided to monitor non-dominant wrist movement as part of the data collected to determine sleep state. That continues today, so there is a ton of research that has been collected over the years on correlating wrist movement with sleep cycle.”

He added that WakeMate has built an algorithm that fits the data collected by its wristband to these medically relevant sleep-cycle models and spits out graphs mapping your sleep states, your waking moments and even times when you were in deepest sleep.

“All the competing tools out there aren’t at all based on any kind of accepted research–no one is studying pillow movement or waistband movement or anything,” Gupta said. “But we know how you are sleeping when you move your wrist.”

The major questions facing WakeMate as a company revolve around what one might expect from a start-up with such a complex beta product.

Gupta said it will focus on innovating and revising its wristband, as well as doing more interesting things with the data it will collect.

“On the macro level, we’re really doing the biggest sleep study that has ever been done,” he said. “We’ll be able to tell you how people are sleeping in San Francisco versus New York, based on seasons and all kinds of things.”

Gupta added that while he doesn’t know what the next step is, WakeMate is prototyping ideas where it could correlate sleep data with other metrics about health, occupation and stress to provide a more complete tool set.

But as more companies work on the problem of digitizing the analog data of human life, the harder questions to answer are really in front of the consumer.

Gupta said he doesn’t know what a world would look like if a health insurance company could access your sleep data, or when information about your apparent insomnia is grabbed by some hacker.

What WakeMate hopes for, he said, is a world where more people have access to the kind of medical data collection that has previously only been collectable by trained technicians in controlled settings.

But more data is better, as far as WakeMate is concerned–it is hoping that its vision puts its products at the center of an all-day biometric data collection future.

Even as Groupon is poised to sell itself to Google for badillions of dollars, the attack of the social buying clones continues.

Today, it is the launch of FamilyFinds, a Santa Monica, Calif., start-up aimed at offering daily deals to families, with $5.75 million in funding to help it get going.

“Think relevance, plus an explosive market plus a great team,” said FamilyFinds CEO Matt Coffin, in an interview yesterday about the new site, whose first “holi-deal” today is “$10 Only-in-LA Santa Photos.”

Others to come include kid-focused live shows, skate rentals and holiday cruises that Coffin said are “hyper-local and demographically targeted.”

Coffin said, as a longtime entrepreneur, he was intrigued with the booming social e-commerce space. But, as a parent, he was less impressed, because of little in the way of personalization.

“I was somewhat disenchanted by the same offers that did not target me accurately,” he said.

(So is BoomTown, who is going to scream if I get another spa treatment or stripper pole lesson offer this week. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

Thus, Coffin said FamilyFinds drills down on one audience–those who need to entertain and serve the little ones.

The former founder of LowerMyBills co-founded FamilyFinds with, among others, a blast from the Web 1.0 past: Former Disney Internet Group head Jake Winebaum.

At launch, FamilyFinds said it will focus on numerous communities across Los Angeles, although a national rollout is coming in 2011.

Split Rock Partners provided the Series A funding.

Here’s the official FamilyFinds press release:

FAMILYFINDS.COM ENTERS $1B LOCAL SOCIAL ECOMMERCE SPACE

Backed by $5.75 Million Investment, Leading Internet Veterans
Launch Vertical Family Daily Deal Site

(Santa Monica, CA) December 1, 2010–FamilyFinds, an online daily promotions site exclusively focused on services and experiences for families, officially launched today. This community-suggested and expert-curated destination advances the online daily deal space by combining a family focus with hyper-local geo targeting. The company also announced that it recently closed on a $5.75M Series A funding round backed by Split Rock Partners, strongly positioning them to be involved in of one of the fastest growing industries of all time.

FamilyFinds is led by Internet industry veterans who founded and ran several successful consumer businesses valued at over $1 billion, including the founder of FamilyFun magazine, who also ran the Disney Internet Group, and the founder of LowerMyBills. The team, all of them now parents, have created an online destination that will not only offer member families great deals on new and favorite neighborhood merchants, but will also provide information and resources to help them discover the best family activities in their own and nearby communities.

According to a recent study of moms*, over 70% use the Internet to find deals and discounts (the most popular activity) and 62% go online for entertainment and family activities. FamilyFinds addresses this trend by directly creating a single destination for moms and dads seeking deals and family activity ideas.

“Families, local and national brands, and member-based deals is a great combination for a big vertically focused business, and one that we believe is untapped,” said Matt Coffin, chief executive officer, FamilyFinds.com. “As parents and consumers ourselves, we know the key to unlocking this market is relevance, which means being local, curating deals and fun discoveries that create family memories, and delivering great value-based pricing.”

Through consumer testing and an early beta, FamilyFinds learned that consumer demand, especially for busy families, while value influenced, is also heavily influenced by proximity to the merchant. The company will follow a hyper-local model, offering great finds not just within specific cities around the United States, but within specific neighborhoods. For launch, prior to the nationwide roll-out in 2011, FamilyFinds will serve numerous communities across Los Angeles, including neighborhoods in the Valley, Pasadena, South Bay, City Central, and the Westside.

“We know that moms and families are social and use the Internet not just to find great opportunities for themselves, but also to share and coordinate these opportunities and their experiences with other families, friends and neighbors,: said Brian Barnum, president. “FamilyFinds is building a social layer over everything we do to infuse our core value proposition with insight and access to the larger community of families in our customers’ extended networks.”

FamilyFinds is the collaborative effort of Internet industry veterans and parents, including:

• CEO Matt Coffin, founder of LowerMyBills.com (sold to Experian) and active Internet investor including Demand Media, Buscape (sold), Rubicon Project, Mahalo, Machinima and social eCommerce companies Hautelook, ShoeDazzle and ecoMom.

• Jake Winebaum, who was co-founder of eCompanies, which launched Business.com, Jamdat and Boingo, and founder of FamilyFun magazine and led Disney’s entry to the Internet as Chairman of the Disney Internet Group.

• Doug Hirsch, who was VP of Product at Facebook, GM Yahoo Entertainment and Founder of DailyStrength.org.

• President Brian Barnum who was the President of RHD Interactive (a division of R.H. Donnelly, now Dex One Corp.) and both COO and CFO of Business.com and CFO of Rent.com (sold to eBay).

• Leading content and merchandising is Elizabeth Hurchalla, previous editor of BlackboardEats and co-founding producer of Yahoo! Food.

• Leading editorial is Julie Taylor, previous editor-in-chief at Momlogic.

• Leading sales is Terry McGovern, previous Director of Interactive Sales at Los Angeles Times and sales at AT&T local

A few weeks ago, BoomTown sat down in a hipster coffee place in a hipster section of San Francisco to talk to the hipster trio of founders of AirBnB.

Which, if you think about it, is a very hipster name for what is essentially the ability to rent out your apartment, home or wack-a-doo space (such as a shoe-shaped hotel or Frank Sinatra’s Palm Springs estate).

AirBnB is an alternative to other fast-growing similar sites such as VRBO–Vacation Rentals By Owner, only with more style and niche cool.

But the former Y Combinator start-up is not without its more traditional aspects, such as a recent $7.2 million Series A funding from Greylock Partners.

Also on board, its initial Silicon Valley venture investor, Sequoia Capital, which forked over $600,000 in seed financing last year.

That came after AirBnB’s first foray for travelers to find inexpensive lodging–often no more than just a room for events, such as the U.S. Presidential conventions–turned into a wider and more pricey range of offerings, with 700,000 nights booked so far in 166 countries and 8,000 cities.

AirBnB also includes–of course–reputation and social networking elements–as well as a very slick mobile app with unusually lovely photos–and also easy booking logistics.

And, because it is also very hip to do so these days, there is a Groupon-like daily deal too. But of course there is!

It’s actually all very well done, an interesting way to find cool places to stay beyond the usual.

Here are its founders–Joe Gebbia, Nate Blecharczyk, and Brian Chesky–talking about it all in a video interview, as well as a slideshow of its Top 40 collection of its more unusual properties to rent, such as a plane stuck in a tree in Costa Rica:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101122/socializing-vacation-rentals-the-airbnb-guys-speak/feed/ 6 http://allthingsd.com/20101122/yardsellr-closes-5-million-series-a-round/ http://allthingsd.com/20101122/yardsellr-closes-5-million-series-a-round/#comments Mon, 22 Nov 2010 15:00:07 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=37580

Yardsellr is announcing today that it has closed a $5 million Series A funding round led by Accel Partners.

Harrison Metal, which is run by investor Michael Dearing and gave the social listings and transactions site seed financing last year, also participated in the round.

Yardsellr says it uses “social plumbing to power all interactions between buyers and sellers, although users create listings and consummate transactions.”

Welcome to eBay, Facebook-style!

Online shopping with a social element is starting to boom, at least in terms of financings.

Earlier today, Svpply–a social retail discovery site stocked with stuff you and your friends think are cool–got a $550,000 seed round investment led by Spark Capital and Founder Collective, along with high-profile angels like Ron Conway, Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley and former Myspace co-President Jason Hirschhorn.

And Topguest, a check-in loyalty service that was founded just five months ago, announced last week that it nabbed $2 million in Series A funding, as well as nabbing well-known Facebook investor Peter Thiel as an adviser.

Yardsellr takes yet another social tack, organizing the Internet shopping experience around “Blocks”–using the traditional neighborhood yard sale as an analog inspiration for innovation.

Blocks are micro-communities of people interested in the same products, determined via social networking, specifically following them on Twitter or liking them on Facebook.

Founder Daniel Leffel said in an email that it was better to organize this way “instead of categories, because categories organize products while Blocks organize people.”

Then, he said, when sellers list items, for free, they go out into the feeds of members who have joined the relevant blocks. Sellers can then buy additional traffic to their listings.

Yardsellr also handles payments for sales, with the buyer paying a small transaction fee.

That’s opposite from eBay, where Leffel once worked. Several former eBay execs are also working at the start-up.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101122/yardsellr-closes-5-million-series-a-round/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101116/another-tv-guide-for-web-video-but-shufflr-wants-your-friends-to-do-the-work/ http://allthingsd.com/20101116/another-tv-guide-for-web-video-but-shufflr-wants-your-friends-to-do-the-work/#comments Tue, 16 Nov 2010 20:30:50 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=25913 Smart people are sure that you’re going to watch more and more Web video from the comfort of your couch.

But if that’s the case, how are you going to decide what to watch? The world of Internet video is exponentially bigger than the 500-channel universe you already have, and usually ignore, via your cable box. Who’s going to help you navigate that?

Lots of people, it turns out. In fact, that’s one of the most popular ways to attack the Web video business: Try to create what will turn out to be the Web’s version of TV Guide, and make money by selling content or advertising once you’re big enough.

That’s really what Boxee is up to, if it can get scale. Ditto for Clicker. And Google TV and Apple TV, really. And really, if you think about it, that’s what Hulu would like to do, if Jason Kilar could get his way. Etc.

Here’s yet one more competitor: Shufflr, a newish start-up run by Bangalore-based Althea Systems. Althea has rounded up $3 million via a Series A round from Intel Capital, and is using the money to build out its product, a browser that works on laptops and, soon, phones running Google’s Android platform.*

Shufflr’s pitch is pretty simple: They sort through lots of video feeds–from everyone from YouTube to Comedy Central to Blip.TV–and offer up suggestions about what you’d like to see.

They’re based in part on what you’ve said you like on Twitter and Facebook, and in part on what your friends have said they like, by forwarding a link. And Shufflr plays the video for you–using the original distributors embedded advertising–on its own player.

It’s an interesting concept, but the problem with all of these machine-based recommendation engines is that they’re more clumsy than you’d like.

Shufflr, for instance, can figure out that I like “comedy,” but then it spits up everything that anyone has ever thought is funny. And there’s a whole lot of not-funny stuff there. At least in my humble opinion.

I think that’s not that much of a problem when you’re sitting on a laptop, idling for a few minutes between meetings and just want to watch…something. If you don’t like it, you flip away very, very quickly

But on your couch, which is the use case Shufflr is pushing here, I think your standards are higher. Or different, at least: I’m happy to flip through dud channels on my own, but if some software suggested stuff that I didn’t want to see, I’m not sure I’d stick with it very long.

And I’m sure that, statistically, I’m much more likely to enjoy something that one of my Facebook friends likes, or that someone I follow Twittered about. But that’s a very big group, and the truth is, I probably only care what a very small number of them say about what to watch on the Web. (I’m still angry at Clicker CEO Jim Lanzone, for instance, for raving about “Kick-Ass,” which I ended up renting on VOD. You owe me $4.99, dude.)

But that’s the problem that most recommendation sites and engines have, no matter what the topic is: You really don’t care what everyone you know says about everything–you care what a few people say about something very particular.

In any case, Shufflr is less than a year old, so they’ve got a bit of time to get better. But they’d best do it quickly: Plenty of other folks are trying to crack the same code.

Here’s a demo video, followed by a video Q&A I did with co-founder Rajnish (that’s his full name):

Shufflr – A Social Video Browser from Shufflr on Vimeo.

*Shufflr runs on Adobe’s Flash, which is why it won’t be available on Apple’s iPad/iPod/iPhone platform for a while–the company will need to spend a little time porting its software into an Apple-approved version.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101116/another-tv-guide-for-web-video-but-shufflr-wants-your-friends-to-do-the-work/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20101115/topguest-checks-in-with-2-million-series-a-round-and-peter-thiel-as-advisor/ http://allthingsd.com/20101115/topguest-checks-in-with-2-million-series-a-round-and-peter-thiel-as-advisor/#comments Mon, 15 Nov 2010 15:33:57 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=37263

Topguest, a check-in loyalty service that was founded just five months ago, has gotten $2 million in Series A funding, as well as nabbing well-known Facebook investor Peter Thiel as an adviser.

Investors in the round include: Thiel’s Founders Fund, as well as angels such as Ron Conway, Keith Rabois, Jeff Clavier and Naval Ravikant.

Topguest is exiting its beta phase today with partners that include Virgin America, Hilton, Wyndham Worldwide, Kimpton and others.

Using Topguest, those companies can offer deals, making large travel and hospitality loyalty programs social by plugging them into smartphones and geolocation.

Users check in with their existing services–such as Foursquare, Twitter, Facebook Places and Gowalla–in order to get benefits such as air miles for your Virgin Elevate account and hotel points for Hilton HHonors.

Topguest is competing in a crowded market, where a lot of such services are offering many kinds of deals.

The San Francisco start-up is most like another service aimed at retailers called Shopkick, where you get points when you check in to its mobile app.

Topguest said the differentiator is that it links into geolocation services already in use, instead of requiring another different check-in and offers points in already existing loyalty programs.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101115/topguest-checks-in-with-2-million-series-a-round-and-peter-thiel-as-advisor/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101115/music-video-for-database-start-up-that%e2%80%99s-how-couchone-rolls/ http://allthingsd.com/20101115/music-video-for-database-start-up-that%e2%80%99s-how-couchone-rolls/#comments Mon, 15 Nov 2010 08:08:31 +0000 Deborah Gage http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=32520 How does a small Bay Area start-up whose business revolves around arcane coding compete for developers with the likes of Facebook and Google?

By making a rap video, of course.

CouchOne Inc., an Oakland, Calif-based company that makes a database built on open source software called CouchDB, produced the video partially on a whim and partially to bring attention to the start-up, which raised a $2 million Series A round last year from Redpoint Ventures and is in the process of raising a Series B.

The video, “I Use CouchDB,” stars CouchOne co-founder Chris Anderson and the company’s office manager, Claire McCabe, as a cool-looking pair whose stresses melt away when they replace their clunky SQL database with CouchDB. The video intersperses shots of the company’s product in use with scenes of Chris and Claire rolling through the streets of Oakland, Claire at one point riding on a car hood.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101115/music-video-for-database-start-up-that%e2%80%99s-how-couchone-rolls/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101114/path-the-social-app-thats-not-viral-by-design/ http://allthingsd.com/20101114/path-the-social-app-thats-not-viral-by-design/#comments Mon, 15 Nov 2010 05:00:26 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=324 Silicon Valley is in the midst of a mini photo-sharing app boomlet. We have Instagram (which started adding 100,000 users per week as soon as it launched last month), Picplz (which beat out Instagram to get a Series A round with their shared investor, Andreessen Horowitz) and as of tonight Path, from former Facebook exec Dave Morin.

Dave Morin

All three companies make mobile apps (primarily on the iPhone) that allow users to take and immediately share images with friends. It seems kind of simple and mundane, but all these smart people seem to think photo-sharing is the future.

Morin and Path are the most convincing about there being a larger idea behind what they’re doing. San Francisco-based Path is stubbornly focused on close personal connections–a.k.a. real friends.

Unlike every other social site, where there’s an implicit pressure to collect as many friends and followers as you can (and at the same time increase the site’s user numbers), Path is only for the people you really know and trust.

In order to force and foster that kind of sharing, Morin’s team has left out many of the social Web features we’re used to. Users can do only two things on Path: Share photos and view them.

There are no reciprocal friend relationships, no likes or comments, no fun photo-editing filters, no publishing photos to services like Facebook and Flickr, no editing something after you post and no global user search (you have to know the email or phone number for anyone you want to add).

And there are additional restrictions. Users can only ever share with a maximum of 50 people (though they can follow more than 50 people, if invited). Every single post has its own privacy settings–you can share with either only the people tagged in it, or only your share list. If you get sick of someone who’s sharing with you, you can “pause” that person until further notice. Users who don’t have iPhones can view photos on the Web.

The most interesting feature for me is that users see which of their contacts have viewed any one photo. So on Path, you can’t lurk in peace. People know when you’ve seen their posts. This might be a little creepy, but it also could cut down on those annoying awkward conversations that sometimes happen when you’ve seen someone post about something online and then they start telling you about it in person.

Photos are tagged with the location where they’re taken automatically, and users can add people and tags. If someone else takes a picture at that same location, tags that have been previously used near that place recently will be at the top of the list.

The idea is those tags will be used to help users relive their memories stored on the service. So, for instance, someone Morin shares with could retrace his “path” of wine tasting in Napa by zooming in on a map of the pictures he posted from California wine country.

But the thing is, if you want to go try Path (which you’ll be able to do in the U.S. and Canada as of 9 pm PT tonight by going to Apple’s App Store, and in the rest of the world within a few hours), it’s going to seem rather empty at first. You’ll have to seek out friends to share with from scratch–but even worse, nobody will be sharing with you until they decide to add you.

Unlike just about every other social service, Path is not really viral. At all. So even though it’s interesting, its numbers are highly unlikely to correspond favorably to those of competitors like Instagram. And after all, how many mobile photo-sharing apps are you really going to use?

“We really prioritize slow organic growth over hyper-viral growth and going after influencers to build this really steep graph,” said Morin, who formerly helped lead Facebook Platform and Facebook Connect before leaving the company in January. “We are building Path to be a 30-year brand.”

He added, “Many of the photo-sharing apps are photo-blogging apps and popularity contests. On Path, you should always feel comfortable being yourself.”

This antiviral stuff almost seems like overkill, but Morin grounds Path’s feature decisions in the theories of the evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar (known for the oft-cited “Dunbar’s Number” of 150 acquaintances, he also proposes that 40-60 people is the outer bound of our personal networks) and Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman (who talked about the difference between experience and memory in a well-received TED Talk on happiness).

If this hyper-personal stuff works, I think Path could potentially create a third major category of social network, distinct from the kind of relationships found on the two current giants, Facebook and Twitter. But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves–and c’mon Dave, you should really let people comment on and like their friends’ photos.

Path was co-founded by Morin, Shawn Fanning and Dustin Mierau, both formerly of Napster. The staff also includes Mallory Paine, who helped engineer the iPhone photo and camera apps for Apple, and Matt Van Horn, who formerly did business development at Digg. Fanning is chairman and landlord of the company but is working on his own other projects day-to-day.

Path has already raised a jumbo seed round with Index Ventures, First Round Capital, Founders Fund and Betaworks. The company also provided us with an extensive list of individual angel investors: Ron Conway, Kevin Rose, Ashton Kutcher, Keith Rabois, Dustin Moskovitz, Marc Benioff, Gary Vaynerchuk, Steve Anderson, Tim Draper, Joi Ito, Fadi Ghandour, Matt Cohler, Sam Lessin, Bill Randuchel, Karl Jacob, Paul Buchheit, Ruchi Sanghvi, John Couch, Michael Parekh, Claudio Chiuchiarelli, Maurice Werdegar, Don Dodge, and Chris Kelly.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101114/path-the-social-app-thats-not-viral-by-design/feed/ 18 http://allthingsd.com/20101112/after-imeem-ends-on-bum-note-founder-back-with-new-venture/ http://allthingsd.com/20101112/after-imeem-ends-on-bum-note-founder-back-with-new-venture/#comments Fri, 12 Nov 2010 21:58:19 +0000 Ty McMahan http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=32494 Investors often talk about the importance of a founder having previous start-up experience. Dalton Caldwell’s last start-up certainly was an experience.

He founded online music service Imeem Inc. in his apartment and watched it grow to 95 employees and raise more than $25 million in venture capital. Then he watched it fall apart, selling to MySpace Inc. for a reported $1 million.

“It helps to have some sort of track record and be able to talk about lessons learned,” Caldwell said.

That experience was enough to attract one of the hottest venture capital firms in the game to Caldwell’s new business, Mixed Media Labs Inc. Andreessen Horowitz backed the company in a $5 million Series A round, with Marc Andreessen joining the company’s board.

“It’s great to work with Marc,” Caldwell said. “I met him a few times over the years at conferences and I’d come up with any idea just to talk to him.”

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101112/after-imeem-ends-on-bum-note-founder-back-with-new-venture/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101110/no-its-not-instagram-photo-sharing-app-picplz-raises-5-million/ http://allthingsd.com/20101110/no-its-not-instagram-photo-sharing-app-picplz-raises-5-million/#comments Thu, 11 Nov 2010 04:31:22 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=25735 Mixed Media Labs, the parent company behind photo-sharing app Picplz, has raised a $5 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Up until now Picplz, which works on both Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android platforms, has been best known as the new project from Dalton Caldwell, who ran music service Imeem until it collapsed a year ago. Next question: Who is investing in rival photo-sharing app Instagram? (Ahem. Besides Andreeseen’s firm, which invested in that start-up’s seed round.)

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