Benchmark Capital Bets On Super-Quiet-Stealth-Shhhh ccLoop

Michael Arrington

J. Michael Arrington (born March 13, 1970 in Huntington Beach, California) is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of TechCrunch, a blog covering startups and technology news. Arrington attended Claremont McKenna College (BA Economics, 1992) and Stanford Law School (JD, 1995) and practiced as a corporate and securities lawyer at two law firms: O’Melveny & Myers and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich... → Learn More

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

Heard about ccLoop? No, probably not. It’s a new stealth startup founded by repeat (and very successful) entrepreneur Michael Wolfe.

The company came out of Wolfe’s stint as an entrepreneur in residence last year at Benchmark Capital. This is Wolfe’s fourth company, the previous three have been huge wins. His last company, Vontu, was acquired by Symantec in 2007 for $350 million.

And they’ve now raised a $3.5 million round, led by Benchmark. FLOODGATE, SV Angel, Felicis Ventures and Ariel Poler also invested in the round. Benchmark Partner Kevin Harvey is joining ccLoop’s board of directors.

So what will ccLoop do? Here’s all they’re giving away on their landing page:

Usually we love email. We can send to anyone in the world and know they will get the message. Our mailboxes have our histories. Our contacts. Our lives.

But sometimes we hate email, especially when we try to work in teams. Endless “reply all” discussion threads. Multiple versions of documents floating around. Getting messages you didn’t want and missing ones you did.

We at ccLoop are passionate about solving your email problem with a solution that is powerful yet simple to use. We don’t ask you to download anything, learn anything, or change anything.

Stop wasting time. Get more done. Get organized. Stay in the loop.

It sounds like they’re going to fix email. If they do that I’ll love them forever. My understanding is they’re building on top of email with a SaaS offering. But that’s all I know for now. The company says they’ll start beta testing soon.

Another thing to note – this is exactly how EIR positions are supposed to end up. The entrepreneur spends some time at the firm thinking up ideas and meeting with other entrepreneurs, then a company is born and funded by the venture firm. Benchmark does these things by the book, and the results seem to turn out well.

Company: Pipewise
Website: pipewise.com
Launch Date: September 1, 2010
Funding: $3.5M

Pipewise provides User Relationship Management solutions for today’s cloud-based companies who acquire, engage, convert, and support customers via web and mobile channels. Pipewise is backed by Benchmark Capital, Floodgate, SVAngel, Felicis, and an experienced team of advisors.

→ Learn more

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