Today was a pretty big day for 500 Startups, the Silicon Valley seed venture capital firm and startup accelerator founded by outspoken tech investment extraordinaire Dave McClure. The firm disclosed in a regulatory filing that it’s halfway finished raising a brand new $50 million round of funding, the second in its two-year history and a significant step up from the $29 million investment that it raised in its first round. 500 Startups also named four new partners — Paul Singh, Christen O’Brien, Bedy Yang, and George Kellerman — who will help select and manage the more than 100 investments that the firm makes each year.
So we were very happy to have McClure as a guest today on TechCrunch TV. Because of regulatory limitations on what companies can say while they’re in the process of raising funding, his hands were tied on lots of topics on the details of the new fund — but we were still able to get some great details from him on the future direction of 500 Startups and the venture funding world in general. → Read More
It’s a big day for 500 Startups — you know, the seed-stage accelerator and capital fund founded by rabble rouser and geek on a plane, Dave McClure. Back in July 2010, McClure filed for the accelerator’s first fund, raising $30 million to begin officially investing in startups under the new venture capital fund. Today, we’ve learned via SEC regulatory filing that round two is officially on the books, and 500 Startups is going bigger for its second round, raising $50 million.
McClure and company are also today announcing an expansion of the team, as Paul Singh and Christen O’Brien have been promoted to partners. Singh will continue to lead investments, running the accelerator program, and acting as head Data/Metrics guru, while O’Brien continues on her role as head of business development, leading events and conferences, like Geeks On A Plane, Warm Gun, etc. Bedy Yang and George Kellerman have also joined as venture partners. → Read More
Tokyo- and Singapore-based mobile media platform Cinemacraft announced it has extended its Series A round by securing an investment from Dave McClure‘s 500 Startups. The fresh money from the US brings the total amount raised by the company so far to US$900,000.
Previous investors include Singapore-based Jungle Ventures (background), Jayesh Pareikh (founder of Sony Entertainment TV), Jai Maroo (Shemaroo Entertinament), Takuro Wakayabashi (Xseed Partners), and Devesh Chetty (RGM Media). Cinemecraft founder and CEO Sandeep Casi says the investment will be used to create an interactive video ad network in Japan, US, India, and Indonesia, along with ad-supported consumer video apps. → Read More
Parenthood is the closest thing I’ve found to entrepreneurship. Looks cool from the outside but can be really messy inside. Everyone has advice, you work like a dog, the highs are amazing and lows horrendous, and it is the best thing ever.
A 500 Startups company founder emailed me this recently, and I found it to be the best analogy I’ve heard in a long time. Being a parent and being an entrepreneur are quite similar. Allow me to elaborate based on my experience as a mom so far and someone who works very closely with entrepreneurs.
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Aksel Group, the company behind AkselParis.com, a direct-to-consumer online men’s fashion store, announced this week that it has raised $500,000 in seed funding. The round was led by Inspiration Ventures, with participation from Dave McClure’s 500 Startups, Fabrice Grinda, the founder of OLX, IG Expansion’s Jose Marin, Paul Bragiel of I/O Ventures, and French entrepreneur Nicolas Bernadi. → Read More
It’s Halloween, so it’s the perfect day to unveil the newest group of 500 Startups’ “little monsters”. Yes, this is the name that founder Dave McClure and his partner in crime Christine Tsai give to all the rock star entrepreneurs that grace the halls of their Mountain View offices.
500 Startups, as you may have heard by now, is the early-stage seed fund and incubator program founded in 2010 by the globe-trotting angel investor, which seeds between $25K to $250K in each of its startups that meet its “Three Ds” criteria: Design, data, and distribution.
The fall batch kicked off on October 10 and includes 34 awesome startups, which makes this its largest roster to date (the initial batch consisted of 12 startups and the second came in at 21, bringing 500 Startups’ total to 174). → Read More
I’ve spent the past couple of days in London getting caught up in the Seedcamp Week craziness, meeting some of Europe’s finest entrepreneurs and investors. Me and Mike Butcher will soon post a round-up of this year’s finalists (and highlight a few interesting ones separately), but first, Seedcamp has some – actually, a lot of – news of its own to announce today.
The organization, which combines an early-stage seed investment fund with a world-class mentoring program for European entrepreneurs, is expanding by striking a number of international partnerships, setting up new events (Seedhack), establishing an ‘experts-in-residence’ program and an impressive advisory board, raising more funding from a number of new strategic investors and strengthening its offering to fledgling companies with the help of several corporate sponsors. → Read More
It’s that time again! With Dave McClure’s 500 Startups now at 175 startups, sometimes hanging out at its headquarters in Mountain View leaves one a little inundated with promising startups. Especially since motherhen McClure insists that he loves all his little monsters the same.
While each of the 30 startups that presented yesterday at Demo Day is clearly a unique little snowflake, I culled seven of the most interesting (read, that doesn’t mean “will actually be successful”) and interviewed them just like last time.
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After 500 Startups Demo Day on Thursday, I sat down to talk to investor Dave McClure about the strategy and vision behind the early stage seed fund and accelerator program, which he hopes will eventually encompass 500 actual startups (currently the portfolio is at around 110).
In the interview McClure talks about the perfect formula for a startup (hacker + hustler + designer) and why the three Ds — Design, Data and Distribution — are important for young companies. He says that the fund basically makes its $25K to $250K bets on companies with simple revenue models, “Things that are easily understood and make money.”
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Earlier this week 500 Startups announced the creation of The d.fund, a designer-centric fund with the aim of increasing the number of startups co-founded by people who have design experience. As quite a few startups like Tumblr, YouTube, Android and Flickr have achieved success because of their designer founders, d.fund founder and 500 Startups designer Enrique Allen wants to foster a community that replicates their success. → Read More
There are a number of websites out there that allow you to search for and discover internships. Internships.com, which Charlie Sheen recently used to hire a social media intern, is probably the biggest and most well known of the bunch. But, as anyone who’s used these sites knows, the experience is far from perfect. And the same can be said of job search sites like Indeed.
InternMatch is entering the internship search and discovery market by focusing on small-to-medium-sized businesses and by building a tool that’s easy to use with an eye-catching design. And I think it’s fair to say that a big part of making user experience enjoyable (and simple) is derived not only from the smooth application of the technology that underlies a particular service, but perhaps more importantly, from how its designed. → Read More
500 Startups first Demo Day sprint is over and people are trickling out their rankings lists of the 23 startups, or “little monsters” as co-founder Dave McClure calls them. McClure, with a background in marketing, has a unique curator’s eye, and his first batch of companies are an interesting brood, to say the least.
Companies that are part of the 500 Startups accelerator program get a 50K investment from the fund at a $1 million valuation and can stay in the 500 Startups offices for 3-6 months. Companies that are part of McClure’s seed program receive up to $250K in seed funding, and McClure has the option of following on in later rounds. All in all the 500 Startups investment stable includes 110 startups, including Twilio, inDinero and Foodspotting. → Read More
It was another fast-paced day at 500 Startups’ open house in Mountain View today, as Dave McClure and company officially introduced the world to its first batch of killer startups. One of the many stellar demos came from Ninua, a startup that is building social apps around news, blogs, and social media.
Its recently launched Ninua News Reader is a news-sharing application for Android that recommends articles and blog posts that people in your network are writing or sharing. It allows for the automatic curation of what appears in your stream, based on your interests as well as your friends’ interests. Not another news aggregator, you may be muttering. Well, yes, but it has a slight twist. It’s Facebook enabled — and built on a blog platform. → Read More
Dave McClure’s seed fund, accelerator, and incubator, 500 Startups, held an open house in Mountain View today to officially introduce the world to its first batch of companies. The group of mostly consumer-focused startups (not much advertising to be found) at Demo Day put forth quite a few interesting ideas and business models. We’ll be posting a roundup of the best startups (with interviews) later tonight.
Among those nifty ideas presenting today is Motion Math, a startup creating a suite of educational apps intended to give kids a more interactive (and fun) way to learn challenging topics. The startup (which just raised an undisclosed seed round from 500 Startups and a flock of angels) wants to leverage the engaging physical aspects of the mobile experience, like the touch interface and accelerometer, to create that interactive quality which will help kids internalize what they’re learning. → Read More
Zachary Allia is just 26 years old. He’s either really lucky, is a negotiating savant or a combination of both. Back in 2007 when Facebook first opened their platform, Allia and a graphic designer pal came up with the Free Gifts app– mostly because he was a poor college kid and paying $1 to send someone a picture of a cake seemed exorbitant. He launched it and woke up the next morning to find it had 1 million users. It soared to ten million before he sold it to SGN in 2008.
Three things are notable about that deal: It was for a small undisclosed amount but Allia owned 100% of the company at the time, so it was likely a life changing amount of money; he chose selling to SGN over selling to Zynga (doh!); and he came to regret the deal once SGN abandoned the product to move more towards games. When Facebook abdicated its own virtual gifts product last summer, Allia decided he wanted the company back. Getting it took some doing, as he explains in the exclusive interview with TechCrunchTV below. → Read More
Dave McClure‘s 500 Startups fund has just made its fourth investment in Asia. Tokyo-based Exchange Corporation, which runs a peer-to-peer lending service called AQUSH in Japan, has raised an undisclosed sum from the Silicon Valley-based fund.
Much like Zopa in the UK, AQUSH connects people with extra money with those who want to borrow money. The site allows lenders to set their desired investment amount and interest rates from 4% to 15% for 5 classes of borrower credit risk, as denoted by AQUSH itself. Loan applicants are screened by AQUSH based on their credit histories, financial situation and FICO scores. → Read More
This guest post is by Dave McClure, founder of 500 Startups and GeeksOnaPlane.
As we wrap up our GeeksOnaPlane video series for TechCrunch TV, I thought I’d offer a perspective on Asia from the eyes of a Silicon Valley geek and investor (not to mention the father of two Japanese-American kids).
I am extremely optimistic about tech entrepreneurship around the world, and in particular in the emerging powerhouse economies of Asia. My new fund 500 Startups is only a few months old, and yet we have already made 8 investments outside the US (4 in Europe, 4 in Asia). Earlier this year, on a trip to Japan I made an investment in MyGengo.com, which provides a crowdsourcing platform and API for language translation. Over the spring & summer, we made several other investments in Europe after meeting companies last year in London at SeedCamp. And our most recent deal happened just this past Thursday, and is our first portfolio company in China — ChinaNetCloud out of Shanghai. → Read More
Last April, adventure travel marketplace EkoVenture, relaunched as Zozi, with a focus on a local activities instead of exotic travel. Shifting the focus to promoting deals on local activities such as kayaking in San Francisco Bay, cocktail classes in Atlanta, or floating down the Delaware river in an innertube is aimed at reaching a broader class of consumers.
The company just closed a $3 million series A investment. ZIG Capital, Dave McClure’s 500 Startups, LaunchCapital, and individual angels including Larry Bock and Dave Dolby. → Read More
In January, we broke the news that prolific Silicon Valley angel investor Dave McClure was to set up his own venture capital fund.
About a month ago, he formally filed for the ($30 million) seed fund and incubator, naming it 500 Startups.
McClure has now made his first hire for the investment firm, attracting former YouTube and Google product manager Christine Tsai to serve as Principal. → Read More
In January, we broke the news that prolific Silicon Valley angel investor Dave McClure was to set up its own venture capital fund.
Yesterday, the man filed for the fund with the SEC, providing us with more details (hat tip to FormDs.com). The name will be 500 Startups – McClure has long called himself the master of 500 hats – and the initial fund will amount to max. $30 million according to the filing. → Read More
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