Blippy is always fun to write about because so many people are enraged by its very existence. But all that rage apparently hasn’t stopped the company from getting lots of investor attention. In addition to landing a bevy of top tier angels and venture capitalists in their first round of financing, we’ve now heard that Blippy is preparing to close on a new round.
August Capital partner David Hornik is leading the round. And the valuation is “totally absurd” says one source. Another puts it at $50 million, although that may be a little on the high side. Regardless, that’s not bad for a site which only launched publicly two months ago. Update: Yet another source says “high 30s” on valuation, and we think that’s about right.
Blippy wouldn’t comment on this story. I reached David Hornik (he seemed to regret having answered the phone). All that he’d say is that he loves Blippy, but he would neither confirm nor deny an investment.
If you’re not already familiar with it, Blippy is a Twitter-like service where users post everything they purchase. You can hook up your credit cards and various online services (Amazon, iTunes, Zappos, etc.), and details about everything you buy are posted. You can see my account here – I’ve linked it to my iTunes. See our Blippy launch post for more details.
Lots of people love posting and discussing their purchases on Blippy. But lots of other people just hate the idea of the service as an insane invasion of privacy (albeit one that people voluntarily enter into). Read the comments on any of our Blippy posts to see examples of that indignation.
Putting all that aside, though, if enough people start using Blippy they are going to be able to monetize the heck out of it. Advertisers will see exactly what users are buying and be able to target them with ridiculous precision. In fact, the data is so deep and rich that Amazon is already threatened by the young startup.
Blippy is a service that allows users to automatically share their credit card transactions as they make them. This includes the place the purchase was made, the amount, and in some cases, the item. This is all placed in a social stream where other Blippy users can comment on and “like” the various items. In May 2011, Blippy shut down its service.
August Capital is a venture capital firm that focuses on investing in early stage technology companies. You guessed it - it was founded in August (1995). The firm currently has just under $2 billion under management.
David joined August Capital in 2000. He invests broadly in information technology companies, with a focus on enterprise application and infrastructure software and consumer facing software and services. Prior to joining August Capital, David was an intellectual property and corporate attorney at Venture Law Group, Cravath Swaine & Moore, and Perkins Coie LLP. In his legal practice, David represented high tech startups in all aspects of their formation, financing and operations, including Yahoo, When.com (AOL), Sonique (Terra Lycos), Pure...
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