Human powered search engine Mahalo raising $20M

November 16, 2007 | Matt Marshall | Comments |

[Update: This story is confirmed]

mahalo.jpgMahalo, the search engine that is powered by humans — furiously writing up results on those topics frequently asked by searchers — is seeking to raise a $20 million round of financing at very high valuation, we’re told.

We’re hearing Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis wants potential investors to value his company at $175 million, before they invest, which is lofty considering the company reportedly has less than 1.5 million monthly unique users.

Calacanis did not respond to a request for comment from VentureBeat.

Calacanis has been trying to promote the site with things like Mahalo Daily, a web show with a former CNET host named Veronica Belmont.

The financing round will be the company’s third. Calacanis told the WSJ (no link; subscription required) in May that he raised enough money from investors to last five years, so its not clear why he is raising more money now. [Update I: We've since confirmed the fund-raising plans with a second well-placed source. While Mahalo does have enough cash for five years, the company has decided to raise more money for opportunistic reasons; its a good time to raise money, and might consider an acquisition or partnership.] The investors include Sequoia Capital, News Corp., CBS Corp., PayPal Inc. founder Elon Musk, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and others.

However, another human powered search engine, ChaCha, just raised $10 million more financing, so Mahalo may be seeking to hold its own.

See previous coverage here.

Daily Mahalo video is below.

[Update II: Calacanis has since gotten back to us, and said he wouldn't comment on corporate matters. However, he argues 1.5 million uniques is impressive when you compare it to the traffic of ChaCha, Hakia and others. He said he has 50 employees, but also has 50 volunteers signing up each day to write up search result pages -- so many, in fact, that Mahalo can't handle them all. Last week, the company produced 1,000 new search result pages, more than three times the daily number it had expected when launching earlier this year, he said.]

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Matt Marshall is editor and CEO of VentureBeat. Follow him on Twitter at @mmarshall, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • do you really buy this? :)
  • Yakov, not sure what you mean. Buy the story, or buy that Mahalo is worth this much? I've since confirmed the story.
  • Nat
    I think wikipedia is more promising search engine than mahalo.

    Nat
    www.workersinc.com
  • james
    Mahalo is a joke. Might be useful for people that are 100 yrs old and have no clue how to use the internet.

    Investors just lost their money
  • Dirk Bogard
    I'd like to see the pages authored by the 50 people who show up every day, so many that they can't process them? Then I'd like to ask them why they work for Mahola for slave wage. Then I'd like to see the quality of their work. I'd love to see their guidelines for the 50 people every day, are they allowed to use Google to do their amazing pages that help people? I love Jason but this time he's gone to far.
  • Jason Calacanis has taken drawing from my blog, removed (c) copyright from it, and placed on his server. As far as I am concerned he is a thief. The same is with Mahalo: it is just a link directory with content written by people with no authority. His company Mahalo Inc is worth nothing. Zero.
  • How could it be worth that much?
    I think that it would be more interesting to readers if you digg more
  • Ramon
    I agree with James, Mahalo is a wikipedia of seach engines.. if google cannot even reach 5% of the web imagine what Mahalo will accomplish...

    I think Mahalo created a new aspect for search engine and that's important, but there are other things that needs to be accomplished for search engines.
  • ryan
    I got to imagine that most of the page views come from people working at Mahalo because I don't know anyone that goes to that site and why would they.
  • JS
    If you look at the Alexa data, you will find that the largest segment of their audience is for the content creators. 59% either go to their greenhouse or guides page.
  • Well, i dont think it works like the girl explains