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Is Digg “A Thing” Again?
Ars Technica tech policy writer Timothy B. Lee tweeted this morning that news aggregation service Digg is “a thing” again, which I hope means he’s seen some meaningful traffic and distribution of one or more of his pieces through the service.
My traffic stats suggest that digg is a thing again.
— Timothy B. Lee (@binarybits) April 4, 2013
After being purchased by Betaworks last year Digg has undergone a makeover, and some bloggers lamented that this previously regular source of traffic wasn’t what it used to be. Are you seeing an uptick in traffic from Digg distribution of your stories?
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IPO-Bound Flurry Looks to Double Headcount, Launch Real-time Bidding Platform
Flurry, the Google Analytics of mobile applications used in nearly 300,000 mobile applications, is widely rumored to be IPO-bound though no official paperwork has yet been filed. One job listing mentions that the role will include “managing policies and procedures required to ensure full IT compliance with SOX 404 and all other laws, regulations, and SEC requirements in anticipation of Flurry’s IPO”.Our sources tell us the company is on track to double their headcount this year, and the 105 person organization currently has 50 open positions they’re looking to fill including director roles in Evangelism, Partner Integration, IT, Product Management, QA and Sales.
As ambitious as this sounds, the company doubled last year and shows no signs of slowing down after hitting cash flow positive and raising another large chunk of funding at the end of 2012. Flurry provides analytics services to developers for free and uses the anonymized data they collet to help developers increase their audience with targeted in-app advertising across their ad network, tracking over 1.2 trillion anonymous aggregated user sessions per month.
Launching a Real-time Bidding Marketplace?
In early March Flurry competitor Tapjoy announced the launch of their mobile advertising platform out of beta, and with it came a real-time bidding platform. A little sleuthing (Google, actually) reveals that Flurry is currently hiring for a Realtime Bidding Manager and has posted their Terms of Service for a realtime-bidding marketplace, which describes the service as:
…the automated real-time auction service that enables you to bid on and purchase inventory for the placement of Ads in the Flurry RTB Marketplace, a virtual marketplace where you may buy inventory for yourself or on behalf of third party advertisers (“Advertisers”) from sellers. “Ads” means your text, graphic, rich media and other advertising materials. The Flurry RTB Service enables you to deliver Ads through the Service by responding to ad requests delivered through Flurry’s real-time bidding application programming interface (the “API”) with a CPM-based bid price for that impression (the “Bid”)
While the TOS page is live, it is unclear whether this service is live to customers and we have reached out to Flurry and will update this post when we hear back.
The bottom line: The launch a real-time bidding platform is the inevitable next-step in Flurry’s path to IPO. But with Gartner estimating the mobile advertising market will continue to double over the next three years, reaching more then $20 Billion by 2015, mobile advertising is hardly a winner take all market. I also wonder whether Tapjoy is considering IPO plans as well, and I’m curious whether Google has made overtures to purchase one of the two companies.
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Startup Investment Hits 3.5 Year Low in December, Q1 M&A Slowest Since 1995
According to investments reported in the Crunchbase database, this winter investment dollars flowing to startup companies reached low point not seen since May 2009.
Even more concerning, on Monday the National Venture Capital Association reported that venture-backed IPO exits fell to a 3 year low in the first quarter of 2013, while M&A was at its lowest point since 1995.
According to the article:
The number of venture-backed IPO exits during the first quarter of 2013 fell 58 percent compared to the first quarter of last year. For the first quarter of 2013, 77 venture-backed M&A deals were reported, 10 of which had an aggregate deal value of $984.3 million, a 73 percent decrease from the first quarter of 2012. This marks the slowest quarter for number of disclosed deals since the first quarter of 1995*, when eight disclosed deals were completed.
“First quarter IPO and acquisitions activity is often subdued as year-end reporting and forward planning take priority, but this year political, taxation, and sequestration concerns weighed even more heavily on the exit market for emerging growth companies. Therefore, activity was especially slow,” said John Taylor, head of research for NVCA. “That said, public market valuations have been up recently, 2012 financial statements are being finalized now, and quality companies tell us they are starting the process toward an exit later in the year. Despite having waited for the right opportunity to move forward, the 2013 class of companies that goes public or gets acquired will have to be solid. Barring significantly adverse events, we expect stronger volume in the second and third quarters.”
*emphasis added
I’m unclear why the tech press did not report on this, and can only speculate they were too busy curating lists of April Fools Day pranks to notice. Or maybe they thought this was a bad joke from the NVCA?
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Indexing the Andreessen Horowitz Portfolio Companies – Pinterest, Twitter and Github on Top
Over the past few weeks I’ve been indexing groups of startups, starting with the Y Combinator index and 500 Startups index. I’ve received a lot of requests for other indexes, and the company whose portfolio everyone wanted to look at was that of the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.Portfolio Overview
Andreessen Horowitz has an impressive list of exited companies in 3 IPOs (Facebook, Groupon, Zynga) and 3 acquisition from high profile companies: Nicira (acquired by VMWare), Instagram (acquired by Facebook), and Skype (acquired by Microsoft).
For this post my research covers companies that have not yet exited.
Andreessen Horowitz Consumer Startup Index
Andreessen Horowitz Enterprise Startup Index
The enterprise index is entirely based on traffic at this point, since Facebook MAUs aren’t useful for this segment of companies. We are working on collecting more useful revenue / unit economics data for ranking these companies and know this does not accurately reflect their progress. For example Apptio is in the #31 spot but is preparing for a possible IPO.
Methodology
The index takes into account website traffic ranking globally, as provided by Alexa, along with a weighted average of Facebook monthly active users (MAUs). While traffic is only one part of the story, how it changes over time can provide a useful proxy for evaluating how the company’s reach and attention received from others. There are many other indicators of a companies health that I will take into consideration in future indexes, but for now this is presented as a very simple overview of the companies. I split apart the consumer vs. enterprise companies to make it more of an apples to apples comparison.
I have also included Quantcast rankings, as many people seem to think they are more credible. Overall I found their data set had too many gaps to be useful, although we may weigh it into the average in the future.
Editor’s Note: This is the first index of this portfolio so it does not show each company’s change in rankings over time. I will show that in the next index of this portfolio, one month from now.
Missing Companies
These companies are taken from the AH website, Crunchbase, AngelList and other public announcements. If I missed something please let me know in the comments or email me at danielle (at) refer.ly
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The Stable Song – Gregory Alan Isakov
remember when our songs where just like prayers.
like gospel hymns that you called in the air.
come down come down sweet reverance,
unto my simple house and ring…
and ring.ring like silver, ring like gold
ring out those ghosts on the ohio
ring like clear day wedding bells
were we the belly of the beast or the sword that fell…we’ll never tell.come to me clear and cold on some sea
watch the world spinning waves..like some machinenow i’ve been crazy couldn’t you tell
i threw stones at the stars, but the whole sky fell
now i’m covered up in straw, belly up on the table
well and sang and drank, and passed in the stable.that tall grass grows high and brown,
well i dragged you straight in the muddy ground
and you sent me back to where i roam
well i cursed and i cried, but now i know…now i knowand i ran back to that hollow again
the moon was just a sliver back then
and i ached for my heart like some tin man
when it came oh it beat and it boiled and it rang..its ringingring like crazy, ring like hell
turn me back into that wild haired gale
ring like silver, ring like gold
turn these diamonds straight back into coal. -
Social Shopping Site Wanelo Launches New Vertical For Men, Rises to #7 in Lifestyle Apps
Update: It’s a bit unclear whether this is a new vertical or simply an easier way to see men’s products that have actually been in Wanelo all along. The Wanelo blog has a series called Manelo Monday’s featuring menswear-focused users which indicates they’ve been around longer than we thought. We have reached out to Wanelo for comment.
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CEO Deena Varshavskaya announced today that Wanelo has rolled out their popular “shopping entertainment” service, which was previously gear towards hip Pinterest-loving women, for men as well.
The service curates the best shopping from popular sites like Pinterest, but ensures you can buy everything you find – a common frustration for otherwise satisfied Pinterest users.
The Wanelo Shopping iPhone has quickly risen in the Lifestyle category, and currently holds the #7 spot in the category as well as the #93 spot for free apps overall according to AppData.com. The company also made headlines last week for raising their Series A at a $100M+ valuation.
Check out Wanelo for men
We have reached out to Wanelo for comment and will update when we hear back.
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Introducing Tokkr – April Fools!
A few weeks ago I announced that Referly would be pivoting, and that we would no longer offer cash rewards for purchases generated on the platform after March 31st. Yesterday, we paid out our last rewards and today I am excited to announce that we have decided to turn our focus to a side project we’ve been excited about for sometime: Tokkr.com
I just stood up the web server this morning!
Those who know me understand that I tend to be a bit type A, but I am hoping this project will give me some time to chill out and achieve a bit more work/life balance. Even cooler, it will be powered by our Reefer.ly commerce platform so we can reuse a lot of the sweet code we’ve already written – so instead of hiring and managing engineers we can take off for Thailand and post tons of amazing pictures of us growth hacking.
What is Tokkr?
And for that matter, how does Reefer.ly work? Well from the names of our two products it should be obvious that we are creating a high end, bespoke, hand curated service for people who want to get high. Tokkr will be a consumer site where people can share their favorite experiences, photos, quotes, all in a social, beautiful way. Think of it as Pinterest meets Potspace, or maybe Quora meets Weed Forums.
We’re not totally sure yet since we’ve written one line of HTML and derped around with httpd conf for a few hours for no good reason, but we went through YC so obviously we’ve got what it takes to figure this baby out. In fact PG has some great insights on weed trees, weeding out people, and not dying that I found very relevant.
You can enter your email here to get updates and find out when we officially launch. Anyone who signs up today will get 50% off all products on Reefer.ly and Tokkr for LIFE!
Our First Partner
We has such a great time working with Love with Food, who were our first paying API customer on Refer.ly, and we are excited to share that they have launched Love with Weed this morning to much fanfare. The site looks gorgeous and we can’t think of a better gift to give your friends.
Onward!
UPDATE: We forgot to mention our awesome friends at Pusher will be powering realtime updates. (Full disclosure: Pusher cofounder Damien Tanner is an investor).
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AngelList Receives SEC No-Action Letter Two Days After FundersClub
Updated at 1:53pm PST with comments from AngelList CEO Naval Ravikant.
On March 26th The Funders Club received a no-action letter from the Securities and Exchange Commission stating that it will not recommend enforcement action against the year-old private equity investment platform, making it the first government sanctioned online VC.
What has not yet been reported is that AngelList, a competing service used by early stage companies to receive introductions to investors and take some online investment, received its own no-action letter just two days later on March 28th (embedded below). While being first makes for great PR, FundersClub can expect AngelList will be the first of many competitors to emerge now that its business model has been validated.
The letter to AngelList also mentions a currently unformed business entity with an identical model to that of The Funders Club:
AngelList Advisors LLC (“AngelList Advisors”) intends to form a limited liability
company and register as an investment adviser either with the Commission or one or more states.
AngelList Advisors will be a wholly-owned subsidiary of AngelList or its affiliate. AngelList
Advisors proposes to establish a new angel investing platform (or part ofits existing website)
that will assist AngelList Advisors and accredited investors (“Investors”) in identifying
companies that seek capital and in which one or more so-called “angel investors”3 intend to
invest (each such company, a “Portfolio Company”). If Angel List Advisors identifies and
approves ofboth a Portfolio Company and an angel investor (referred to hereinafter as a “Lead
Angel”), then AngelList Advisors will form a separate investment vehicle (“Investment
Vehicle”) for the sole purpose ofinvesting in that Portfolio Company. You state that the
Investment Vehicle will likely be structured as a limited liability company or limited partnership,
and will be responsible for all organizational costs and expenses associated with its formation
and the investment in the Portfolio Company.4 You also state that AngelList Advisors will
provide the initial capital required to pay such organizational costs and expenses.UPDATE – 1:53PM PST: I have just spoken with AngelList CEO Naval Ravikant, and he has confirmed they have received this letter from the SEC. According to Ravikant, their funding vehicle has been enabled for 28 companies to date and generated $2M in funding in the past month. He also says AngelList on the whole now generates around $10 Million in investment commitments monthly to the larger community of startups receiving introductions on the platform.
He also told us they expect to make money on other services not related to investing, such as Angel List talent which according to Ravikant, “has growing 2-3x in the past month with 1600 mutual matches of about 600 candidates, with 3300 companies recruiting and a reported 5% close rate. AngelList hired their last 3 engineering team members on their own platform”. Giving the hiring challenges in Silicon Valley, this could be huge. Currently AngelList does not charge for talent placements or listing.
“We didn’t really announce this since a lot of it seems like behind-the-scenes inside baseball. It lets us know the legal boundaries of what’s possible in the space and will inform our future products, but right now we’re happy with the SecondMarket partnership – SM vets investors for sophistication, companies for background, and provides Broker-Dealer level protection and compliance.
The /Invest[sic] feature on AngelList is working well so far. We do curate the opportunities to those with a high-quality lead investor, and to date we’ve announced 7 fundings, 14 are closed or in closing, 18 are currently open for Accrediteds, adding about one per day. We’ve received over $6M in commitments in the last Quarter in 915 separate transactions. We have 12,000 Accrediteds on AngelList, and via our SecondMarket Partnership, can reach another 20,000.
Unlike others in the space, we don’t think we can pick the winners – rather, it’s a more open approach for any company with a high-quality lead investor. We also don’t view it as a money-maker for AngelList – more of a community service. We also think it makes sense to augment it with our base service of introducing high-quality companies to sophisticated investors (VCs, Seed Funds, Professional Angels) – we currently drive 500-700 of those introductions per week, and drive about $10M / month there.”
AngelList SEC No-Action Letter from March 28, 2013
Www.sec.Gov Divisions Marketreg Mr-noaction 2013 Angellist-15a1
FundersClub SEC No-Action Letter from March 26, 2013
Www.sec.Gov Divisions Marketreg Mr-noaction 2013 Funders-club-032613-15a1
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Purity Ring “Grammy”
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Facebook Actions Are Coming to Status Updates
Update: A source close to the company has confirmed this new functionality is available as option in the Facebook status composer. For now this works on the web and m-touch for some users, but not yet on mobile. I think this might be the visual sharing reported by TechCrunch in January this year, but I don’t have the functionality in my own Facebook account so it is hard to tell.
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When I saw this status update in my Facebook news feed I did a double take. Can you spot what’s different about it?
I clicked through on the word “coffee” and was taken to the coffee interest page.
It turns out TechCrunch wrote about the introduction of Facebook actions over a year ago. As the article explains:
The new app actions are basically a conceptual expansion of actions posted by apps like Spotify and the Washington Post, and use verbs and nouns that go beyond the non custom actions like “listen†“watch†and “read†to “bought,—spot,—pose,—want,—love†and “become an expert.â€
While these actions were announced as available from within apps, this is the first time I’ve seen it used in my news feed outside of app-generated actions such as “liked” (Facebook) or “listened to” (Spotify) or “pinned” (Pinterest), and I’m not even sure it was generated with an app – it appears like a written status message with no application source.
I tried to update my status to mention the “coffee” interest page and see if it would automatically prompt me to select an action, but no luck.
While initially I was just curious to figure out what Facebook might be doing, it’s clear that being able to organize the actions we’re taking in life like drinking coffee right now could help Facebook better target advertising. I’m sure Starbucks would be interested to know that I drink coffee every day.
