Y Combinator has just closed a new $8.25 million fund led once again by Sequoia Ventures and backed up once again by a collective of prominent angels, including Ron Conway, Paul Buchheit, Aydin Senkut, XG Ventures, and Geoff Ralston.
Back in March 2009, Y Combinator raised a $2 million fund led by Sequoia and backed by angel investors Ron Conway, Paul Buchheit, and Aydin Senkut.
"The new fund is more than four times larger than the preceding one, partly because it's meant to last for several years, and partly because we're going to use it to increase the number of startups we fund," writes Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham.
There will be at least 35 companies participating in the summer 2010 funding cycle, quite a jump from the 27 startups that participated in the winter 2010 cycle. Graham boasts that 20 of those 27 startups have already attained profitability or have secured commitments for more funding.
Started in 2005, Y Combinator provides seed money ($20,000 or less), advice, and connections to startups via two annual three-month programs. Up until last year, the only money the company used came from its four founders: Paul Graham, Robert Morris, Jessica Livingston, and Trevor Blackwell. So far, Y Combinator has funded companies as notable as Airbnb, Heyzap, reddit, Loopt, Justin.tv, Dropbox, Cloudkick, and Posterous (the simple blogging platform where Y Combinator posted today's announcement).
Considering that Y Combinator's very first session included just eight startups, one can tell that Y Combinator has proven to be a successful venture, both for entrepreneurs and investors.
At Culture, Religion & Tech, take II in Miami on October 29, 2024
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Bambi Francisco Roizen
The company will use the funding to broaden the scope of its AI, including new administrative tasks
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Steven Loeb
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Steven Loeb
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Airbnb.com is the “Ebay of space.” The online marketplace allows anyone from private residents to commercial properties to rent out their extra space. The reputation-based site allows for user reviews, verification, and online transactions, for which Airbnb takes a commission. As of June, 2009, the San Francisco-based company has listings in over 1062 cities in 76 countries.
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Posterous is the easiest way to post rich media online. Simply compose an email to post@posterous.com, including any text and attachments. You can attach images, video, audio, documents, and links. We'll convert everything to most web friendly format and publish it online instantly.Startup/Business
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Justin.tv is building the destination site for broadcasting and watching live video online while chatting with friends. Justin.tv tears down the walls of traditional video and social networking sites by enabling viewers and broadcasters to interact and exchange ideas in real time through chat and live video.
In the past, live broadcasting was only available to large media corporations who were willing to spend millions of dollars. Today, Justin.tv has democratized live video by shrinking all of the functionality of an expensive TV satellite trunk into a simple laptop or desktop computer.
The Justin.tv live video network is powered by Python Media Server - a custom built live streaming video server cluster. The network can support thousands of live broadcasts and over 100,000 simultaneous viewers and is 100% owned and operated by Justin.tv.
The Justin.tv chat system is powered by the JTV Twisted Chat Server - a custom built chat server that implements a wide variety of filtering and moderation techniques and relays well over a million messages a day.
Justin.tv has hundreds of thousands registered users and receives millions of uniques and tens of millions of pageviews per month.
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Loopt is a Silicon Valley based startup that has built a revolutionary social mapping service to change the way people use mobile phones to keep in touch with their friends. Loopt facilitates real-world interaction between friends and puts an end to frustrating missed connections.
Using location-based technologies, Loopt lets you know where your friends are by automatically updating maps on your mobile handset. Loopt even lets you send messages to nearby friends or receive automatic alerts when they're nearby so that you never miss an opportunity to meet. Loopt also lets you journal your life so that your friends can see what you're up to. With Loopt, mobile subscribers put themselves on the map.
Loopt is backed by venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and New Enterprise Associates, the same firms that helped found Google, Yahoo!, PayPal and TiVo among many other technology innovators.
Loopt is available on Boost Mobile and Sprint Nextel and will be available on other major US carriers soon
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