YouNoodle’s startup predictor wants to tell you how much your company is worth
YouNoodle, an online community and website for entrepreneurs, just unveiled a feature that’s certain to attract (and anger?) plenty of curious users — a “startup predictor” that scores early-stage companies’ promise and feasibility, and even estimates what their value will be in three years.
The San Francisco startup already drew a fair amount of skepticism when it announced its intentions back in February. But VentureBeat Editor Matt Marshall thought the basic idea isn’t totally crazy, and… Continue Reading
Private rocket company SpaceX gets $20M from The Founders Fund
Space Exploration Technology Corp., the company created by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk and better-known as SpaceX, has raised $20 million from The Founders Fund.
This is the first time SpaceX has raised outside funding, according to the Wall Street Journal; Musk previously invested $100 million of his own money. The news follows right behind the Hawthorne, Calif. company’s third attempted launch. The launch ended in failure last weekend, when the first-stage engine didn’t separate as required…. Continue Reading
Clickable targets small to medium-sized search advertisers, raises $14.5M
Ads that appear next to search results are one of the most valuable forms of online advertising, because they are matched with users’ searches for things they want to buy. You see an ad next to a result for what you’re looking for, then you click on the ad instead of the result, and make a purchase. But organizing large search ad campaigns gets complicated, because these ads are matched up with a user’s search… Continue Reading
Founders Fund raises new fund, aims for more VC disruption
updated
The Founders Fund, a maverick venture firm run by veteran entrepreneurs, has just raised a new fund of $220 million.
The firm will invest money from the fund, officially called Founders Fund II, in 15 to 20 early-stage startups.
The San Francisco firm has made a point of giving power to entrepreneurs in ways that many competing firms don’t. In its view, this focus is fixing the venture business model.
Specifically, it will continue its practice of offering… Continue Reading
Jaxtr raises $10 million, doubles users in one month
Jaxtr, a service for dodging international calling fees using your phone, has raised $10 million in series A round led by August Capital.
It says it has doubled in size in the last month to a million users.
The Menlo Park, Calif. company (more detail from our past coverage here and here [update: first comment below]) allows you to make free phone calls over the web or your mobile and landline phones, including low local rates for… Continue Reading
Philotic, a secretive politics social networking site, raises about $1.2M
More details are leaking out about Sean Parker’s first investment on behalf of The Founders Fund. We mentioned the Berkeley company, called Philotic, here.
Today, Dan Primack writes that it appears “to be an evolution of a politically-focused social networking site launched last fall called Predict06.com (site has since been disabled). The founder is a fellow ex-Facebooker named Joseph Green, and a regulatory filing indicates that it has secured around $1.2 million of a $2.75 million… Continue Reading