Kosmix riases $10M more for search sites in health, autos, more
Kosmix, the Silicon Valley search engine company that focuses on specific topics, such as health, has raised $10 million more in backing.
Kosmix is run by co-founders (including Venky Harinarayan, pictured left) who came close to buying Google in 1999 when they represented Amazon. Google was still a small company, but Google co-founder Sergey Brin responded to their offer saying he’d settle nothing short of single-digit billions; they passed. See our coverage of that history, here.
Needless to say, in retrospect that was a mistake. The Kosmix guys are filled with ambition in order redeem themselves, and they continue to plug away at Kosmix despite terrific odds. Scores of competing companies have launched to focus on every specialty topic under the sun.
Could their hard work be paying off? Kosmix’ health consumer site, www.righthealth.com, is now the sixth most visited health site, according on Hitwise. It draws more than 3.9 million unique visitors a month, according to Quantcast, or a 56 percent increase since its official launch in fall. (See our coverage.) That comes despite a significant number of competitors in the health site and health search domain.
DAG Ventures led the investment. Previous investors Accel and Lightspeed also participated. Kosmix recently released a consumer auto site, www.rightautos.com, which attracts more than two million unique visitors a month, it said. It plans to release more topical search sites, including RightTrips.com, which is next.
The company previously raised $25 million.
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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.
