Conduit Labs: social networking through gaming
Conduit Labs is a secretive new company, not launched yet, but which says it wants to build a new social network: One built around virtual world gaming, but with networking components that reflect real life, just like Facebook does for students on college campuses.
It has just received $5.5. million from Charles River Ventures and Prism Ventureworks.
Conduit Lab founder Nabeel Hyatt and Susan Wu, a virtual world games expert who led the investment for Charles River,… Continue Reading
Fanning to launch Rupture, a social network for games
Shawn Fanning, founder of the popular music file sharing company Napster, is back in the game with a new start-up.
This time, Fanning wants to bring social networking to popular online games like World of Warcraft, as BusinessWeek first reported.
Experts say this is a promising area, because millions of gamers have formed communities with each other through playing, but their interactions have been limited by the confines of proprietary software. Why not open up… Continue Reading
Susan Wu, the first virtual venture capitalist, blogs
Susan Wu is an associate at Charles River Ventures, and becomes the latest in the rare group of female venture capitalists writing a blog (you can count them on one hand).
The blog is called Reality, a play on the theme of her interest, which is virtual worlds. She’s one of the three partners at CRV who made waves earlier this month after launching the Quickstart seed program for start-ups.
Her area has gotten a lot of… Continue Reading
Charles River Ventures introduces friendly “convertible” seed round
Updated
Charles River Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm, has launched a new investment strategy, offering rapid but tiny $250,000 checks to Internet start-ups.
The program, called QuickStart, recognizes times have changed, and that Internet companies no longer need the vast amounts of cash that most venture capital firms want to give to them. The CRV program also offers entrepreneur the friendly terms of the “convertible” seed round, explained below.
VentureBeat talked with the firm’s Silicon Valley… Continue Reading