Investments

Google dominates search. Sure, there’s a thing called Bing and a few other choices out there, but everything ends up being the blue and purple link thing curated mostly by machines. In an effort to experiment with a different approach, we recently led an AngelList syndicated investment in one potential search challenger, a Kansas City based startup called Leap.it who is taking a different approach based on the belief that machine-based algorithms can only get you so far. They hypothesize that by injecting social and real-time data, along with interactions with real people, your search results become much better. ...

Google dominates search. Sure, there’s a thing called Bing and a few other choices out there, but everything ends up being the blue and purple link thing curated mostly by machines. In an effort to experiment with a different approach, we recently led an AngelList syndicated investment in one potential search challenger, a Kansas City based startup called Leap.it who is taking a different approach based on the belief that machine-based algorithms can only get you so far. They hypothesize that by injecting social and real-time data, along with interactions with real people, your search results become much better. ...

Today, we announced that we’ve led an $11 million round for about.me and that I’ve joined the board. I’ve been living online since the mid 1990’s. I’ve tried every service I could find to create an online identity for myself, even Geocities. Today, my identity is spread out over many things, including my blog, Twitter, Google+, Foursquare, our Foundry Group site, the Startup Revolution site, my relatively inactive Tumblr, Facebook, and a hundred other services I’ve dabbled with. ...

Whenever a company gets acquired or goes public, there is often a fancy closing dinner. It’s usually at a nice restaurant in a private room. The wine is expensive and the toasts are many. The people in the room are the founders of the company, the executives, the board members, other major investors, the lawyers who worked on the deal, and the investment bankers – if any were involved. I’ve been to more of these than I can remember. They were fun at first, but now they feel strange to me. The group celebrating is often a very small subset of the people who were involved in helping the company reach its success. I can have a exotic, over the top dinner with friends anytime I want, so it often feels like a burden to me to do yet another fancy dinner. If I’ve been deeply involved in a company, I always look around the room and notice at least one key person missing. Enough time has passed that the celebration seems a little stale. ...

My friends at Harmonix are running a Kickstarter campaign to bring back Amplitude , one of their classic games. It was originally done in the early 2000’s for the Sony PS2. This campaign will bring it up to date for the Sony PS3 and PS4. It was all started by an online post from someone named DumpLord420. Watch the Kickstarter video to hear the backstory and see what they are doing. And, if you are a video game, or Harmonix, fan boy (or fan girl), some Harmonix love is just a few Kickstarter clicks away .

Today, Orbotix , the maker of Sphero, has raised a new round of $15.5 million, led by Shea Ventures and including new investor Grishin Robotics . We were the original investors in Orbotix and I joined their board in the fall of 2010 after they went through the Techstars Boulder program. The first post I wrote about Orbotix included an aspirational phrase for what they were working on. Orbotix is creating a new game platform that combines common physical objects, smart phones, and a software marketplace. Their first product will “reinvent the ball” through the creation of a robotic ball controlled by a smart phone. ...

Whenever one of my partners has a significant exit the other partners gives him a gift. These take the form of super creative, often self-referential things that the partner on the receiving end would never buy for himself but the other partners knows he would love. Last week I got a bust of myself printed on a Makerbot. It was made by Cosmo Wenman , who my partners found at CES last year. This is totally in the show, don’t tell category, so take a look at the 55 second “making of video.” ...

Ever since Orbotix was founded, we’ve been talking about robots and education and how Sphero could play a role. Last week, my friends at Orbotix rolled out a new program called SPRK which stands for Schools, Parents, Robots, and Kids. They’ve already got six lesson plans up with more coming. To get a feel for the potential of Sphero in education, take five minutes out of your day and watch the video below. At the minimum, it’ll make you smile.

FSA (Feld Service Announcement) – my version of a “public service announcement”: Moz is on the hunt for a VP of UX and Design . This role is one of our most crucial hires this year. The ideal candidate will come to us with experience and examples to show of very complex, technical projects that s/he made simple and fun. I would love for you to share this job description with your network or if you have anyone in mind I would love for you to send them our way. ...

Raj Bhargava (CEO of JumpCloud ) and I have been talking about how startups can leverage DevOps and Agile more. We created a conference on DevOps last year for our portfolio companies and it was a huge hit. DevOps is a movement that we are deeply interested in from multiple perspectives. It’s integral to almost all of the companies we invest in and many, especially in our Glue and Protocol themes, are DevOps driven companies. ...