People search engine Spock raises $7M, to launch next year
Spock, the Menlo Park start-up that wants to provide a definitive search engine focused on people, has raised $7 million in a first round of VC funding from Clearstone and Opus Capital Ventures.
VentureBeat reviewed the secretive company here, after getting a demo. It wouldn’t allow VentureBeat to publish screenshots, for fear of alerting competition. Ucloo in China is gunning for the same market, though Ucloo is focused on Asia for now.
Previously, Spock raised an angel round from Clearstone. It will release a closed testing version early next year. Clearstone’s William Quigley, Opus’ Ken Elefant and TheFind.com chief executive Siva Kumar will join Spock’s board.
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About the Author, Matt Marshall
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
