Stealth startup Pushd raises $1.04 million

Steven Loeb · December 26, 2013 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/3401

Created by Summize co-founders, what Pushd actually does is still a big secret

When a start up says that it is in stealth mode, does that mean that it cannot reveal anything about itself beyond its name? I'm really asking here; I don't know what the rules are about that, or if there even are any.

The reason that I ask is because of Pushd. The company a stealth startup that was started by a couple of former Twitter engineers last year, but it gives absolutely no indication about what the company does. I mean, nothing. Except that is it creating an app called Sense.

And what does Sense do, exactly? Your guess is honestly as good as mine.

The idea must be a pretty good one though, because the people who get to hear it seem to be pretty impressed; in fact, it makes enough of an impact that people are willing to give the company money. 

Pushd, which was founded by former Twitter chief scientist Abdur Chowdhury, has now raised $1.04 million, according to a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week. None of the company's investors were named.

This is in addition to the $1.35 million in equity funding Pushd previously raised in July of 2012. The new funding brings its total to just under $2.4 million.

Listed alongside Chowdhury on the SEC document is Eric Jensen, who also worked as an engineer at Twitter. Chowdhury and Jensen were co-founders of search engine Summize, which was purchased by Twitter in 2008 for around $15 million.

Summize, which was founded in 2006, searched reviews and blog discussions from around the Web to create summarized reviews of music, movies, books and more. Searches could include blog mentions, YouTube videos and most reviewed products. 

The two men worked at Twitter for over three years, before leaving within days of each other in 2011. Jensen tweeted his departure on September 16th, while Chowdhury did the same just two days later. 

Interestingly, Jensen, who acted as chief technology officer at Pushd, now lists the company in his previous experience on his LinkedIn profile. So it is possible that Jensen has already decided to leave his new endeavor.

Just as there is no indication of what Pushd is, there is also nothing stating when the rest of us might get the chance to get in on whatever it is they are doing.

VatorNews has reached out to Jensen to find out more about the company, and his involvement with it. We will update if we learn more. 

This news and the SEC document were first reported by VentureBeat on Thursday. 

(Image source: https://www.zeldadungeon.net)

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What is Twitter?

Twitter is an online information network that allows anyone with an account to post 140 character messages, called tweets. It is free to sign up. Users then follow other accounts which they are interested in, and view the tweets of everyone they follow in their "timeline." Most Twitter accounts are public, where one does not need to approve a request to follow, or need to follow back. This makes Twitter a powerful "one to many" broadcast platform where individuals, companies or organizations can reach millions of followers with a single message. Twitter is accessible from Twitter.com, our mobile website, SMS, our mobile apps for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, our iPad application, or 3rd party clients built by outside developers using our API. Twitter accounts can also be private, where the owner must approve follower requests. 

Where did the idea for Twitter come from?

Twitter started as an internal project within the podcasting company Odeo. Jack Dorsey, and engineer, had long been interested in status updates. Jack developed the idea, along with Biz Stone, and the first prototype was built in two weeks in March 2006 and launched publicly in August of 2006. The service grew popular very quickly and it soon made sense for Twitter to move outside of Odea. In May 2007, Twitter Inc was founded.

How is Twitter built?

Our engineering team works with a web application framework called Ruby on Rails. We all work on Apple computers except for testing purposes. 

We built Twitter using Ruby on Rails because it allows us to work quickly and easily--our team likes to deploy features and changes multiple times per day. Rails provides skeleton code frameworks so we don't have to re-invent the wheel every time we want to add something simple like a sign in form or a picture upload feature.

How do you make money from Twitter?

There are a few ways that Twitter makes money. We have licensing deals in place with Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft's Bing to give them access to the "firehose" - a stream of tweets so that they can more easily incorporate those tweets into their search results.

In Summer 2010, we launched our Promoted Tweets product. Promoted Tweets are a special kind of tweet which appear at the top of search results within Twitter.com, if a company has bid on that keyword. Unlike search results in search engines, Promoted Tweets are normal tweets from a business, so they are as interactive as any other tweet - you can @reply, favorite or retweet a Promoted Tweet. 

At the same time, we launched Promoted Trends, where companies can place a trend (clearly marked Promoted) within Twitter's Trending Topics. These are especially effective for upcoming launches, like a movie or album release.

Lastly, we started a Twitter account called @earlybird where we partner with other companies to provide users with a special, short-term deal. For example, we partnered with Virgin America for a special day of fares on Virginamerica.com that were only accessible through the link in the @earlybird tweet.

 

What's next for Twitter?

We continue to focus on building a product that provides value for users. 

We're building Twitter, Inc into a successful, revenue-generating company that attracts world-class talent with an inspiring culture and attitude towards doing business.