YouWeb, the social incubator behind OpenFeint, CrowdStar, Sibblingz and iSwifter, has raised another $2 million in funding from a number of angel investors including Dave Roux (the co-founder and chairman of Silver Lake Partners, Dave Whorton (the founder of Tugboat Ventures), Praful Shah, Brett Wander, Winston Cho and YouWeb founder Peter Relan. The company had previously raised $700,000 in funding.
Relan explains that YouWeb differs from other programs in that it is an extremely early-stage, almost pre-Y Combinator incubator. He says that YouWeb simply chooses individuals based on talent, and entrepreneurs come in with no team, business model or idea. The individual is given $100,000, and develops a business or app in house. YouWeb usually incubates around two entrepreneurs per year.
The company has also brought ex-Walmart, Kosmix, and Amazon executive Michelle Yee Sangster as SVP of business development. Specifically Sangster will be working with YouWeb’s iSwifter and Sibblingz for new business development opportunities.
YouWeb has seen success with a number of its companies in 2011. OpenFeint was acquired by GREE earlier this year for over $100 million and CrowdStar just raised $23 million in new funding. YouWeb and CrowdStar also recently teamed up on a new $10 million fund for mobile social game development.
Sibblingz launched Spaceport, a HTML5 canvas-rendering engine available for iOS and Android and iSwifter’s Flash game-streaming service for mobile devices is set to bring in over $10 million in revenue this year.