HotOrNot Founder Launches Mobile, Social App Perceptual Networks, Raises $1M From First Round, Steve Chen, Max Levchin And Others

Philadelphia-based Perceptual Networks has raised $1 million in funding from an impressive group of VCs and angels, including First Round Capital, Bullpen Capital, Max Levchin, Steve Chen, Michael Birch, Rackspace founder Richard Yoo, Demand Media founder Shawn Colo, Joshua Schachter (founder of Tasty Labs and Delicious), Alexis Ohanian (founder of Reddit), James Hong (founder of HotOrNot), Philip Kaplan, Naval Ravikant, Tikhon Bernstam (founder of Scribd and Parse), Garry Tan (founder of Posterous and Partner at Y-Combinator), Gabriel Weinberg (founder of DuckDuckGo and NamesDatabase), Jameson Hsu (founder of Mochi Media), Bob Ippolito (founder of Mochi Media), Ken Keller (founder of IGN.com and Cadence), Paul Bragiel (partner at I/O Ventures), Tom McInerney, Bill Lee, and Nils Johnson.

The Perceptual Networks’ site seems to be login-only, but from the description in this Philadelphia Inquirer report, the startup appears to be focused on social discovery and mobile.

The startup, which was co-founded by HotOrNot and I/O Ventures founder Jim Young, is developing a suite of products to make it easy for people to find the people they best connect with, whether they are looking for the right co-workers or employees, the right relationship, the right friends and activity partners, or the right community to live in.

Pereceptual co-founder and CEO Cheyenne Ehrlich said in a release “Your community, friends, co-workers and life partner, if you have one, collectively have such a huge impact on the quality of your life. We want to make the process of finding and developing that community of people as easy as possible, for everyone.”

Young founded HotOrNot in 2000 and sold the site for $20 million in 2008. Clearly investors are betting that he has another win.