• Milk Completes $1.5 Million Angel Round, Packed with Valley Names

    Tuesday, April 26th, 2011

    Sarah Lacy writes for PandoDaily, a news site which she founded. She is also an award winning journalist and author of two critically acclaimed books, “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0” (Gotham Books, May 2008) and “Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky: How the Top 1% of Entrepreneurs Profit from Global Chaos... → Learn More

    Kevin Rose has completed a hefty $1.5 million angel round for his new mobile development lab, which we first reported in March, Milk. Rose went for the more-is-more approach, pulling in a wide-syndicate of Valley elites, including TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington.

    Other angels include Ron Conway, Tim Ferriss, Dave Morin, Philip Rosedale, Evan Williams, Shervin Pishevar, Joshua Schachter, Anthony Casalena, Ashton Kutcher, Philip Kaplan, Chris Sacca, Gary Vanyerchuk, Tony Hsieh, Chamath Palihapitiya, Matt Mullenweg, Don Dodge, Matt Williams, Tony Conrad via True Ventures, and Rob Hayes.

    As we predicted, the list is rounded out by Floodgate’s Mike Maples and Greylock’s David Sze, two of Digg’s biggest investors who are betting on Rose again. Missing from the list are a few other Digg angels like Reid Hoffman and Marc Andreessen, but it’s an impressive mix of VCs, angels and Web personalities.

    Milk has also hired four new people, bringing its team to seven. Jeff Hodsdon, a former engineer at Digg, is joining Rose and Daniel Burka as a co-founder. David Peck and Amber Reyngoudt, co-founders of mobile app shop Skull Ninja, have also joined the company, along with Chris Hutchins, formerly in business development at SimpleGeo. That last one is interesting, as he was seemingly poached from SimpleGeo, where former Digg co-founder Jay Adelson is now the CEO and where Rose is also an angel investor. Last month, Rose said he wanted Milk to stay a skeleton team, and he says he’s likely done hiring.

    With a mission, office space, cash, and a team, all that’s left are those ambitious mobile products Rose promised when he launched the company last month. We’ll be watching closely.

    Kevin Rose is an angel investor and serial entrepreneur. He is a Senior Product Manager at Google and previously the founder of Digg and WeFollow and co-founder of Milk. Rose also co-founded Revision3, and Pownce (acquired by Six Apart). In addition, Rose is the founder of Foundation, a private newsletter and podcast, and formerly was co-host of the tech news podcast Diggnation.

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    Company: Milk
    Website: mi.lk
    Launch Date: 2011
    Funding: $1.7M

    Milk is a mobile development lab founded by Kevin Rose, Jeff Hodsdon, and Daniel Burka. Milk has announced its first mobile app, Oink, released last fall. The company has since been acquired by Google.

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