Dan Burka and Kevin Rose reuniting at Google Ventures

Steven Loeb · December 17, 2012 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/2c6c

Burka and Kevin Rose also collaborated at Digg, Milk and Pownce

Daniel Burka is reuniting with his old buddy Kevin Rose, who have worked together on three projects in the past, now that he is joining the team at Google Ventures.

The news was announced on Burka’s Twitter account Monday, where is expressed his excitement to work with Kevin Rose again.

Rose followed shortly after, also tweeting out the news.

Burka and Rose previously worked together at Digg, Milk and Pownce.

Burka was the creative director at Digg, the company co-founded by Rose, from 2005 to 2009. In that time the two co-founded social media tool Pownce together in 2007, before it was acquired by blogging company Six Apart in 2008. Burka and Rose worked together a third time in 2011, when they co-founded mobile development lab Milk, along with Jeff Hodsdon.

Google purchased Milk in March, and Rose, Burka and Hodsdon took positions within Google. Rose moved over to Google Ventures in May.

Burka has been given a profile on the Google Ventures website, where he is listed as “design partner.” According to his Google Ventures bio, after joining Google, Burka led mobile user experience for Google+ before becoming a partner as Google Ventures.

Founded in 2009, Google Ventures is the venture capital investment arm of Google, which makes financially driven investments in technology companies. It typically funds around 40 to 50 seed-stage deals every year. It invests $250,000 or less in a company, but it has invested to $10 million in around 15 companies. Google Ventures aims to complete one or two deals in the $20 to $50 million range every year.

Some of Google Venture’s investments so far include coupon and deal marketplace WhaleShark Media; online coupon site RetailMeNot; interactive entertainment company Kabam, where it participated in an $85 million round in May 2011; a $10 million round in ridesharing company SideCar; vacation rental home listings website HomeAway; cancer diagnostics company Foundation Medicine; smart-thermostat company Nest; carsharing service RelayRides; and smart-grid company Silver Spring Networks.

It was reported in November that Google would be increasing the amount of money it allocated to Google Ventures.

While Google was previous putting $200 million into venture capital funds, it will be increasing that number to $300 million.

A large part of the reason for this is that the initial investments that Google Ventures have made in the past few years have now entered later stages, and may required larger amounts of money to continue to grow.

By being able to invest larger amounts of money, it will put Google Ventures into the same league as other, more established funds, along with allowing Google Ventures to attract higher-profile deals, as it has not yet invested in any companies that have made it really big.

Google Ventures could not be reached for comment.

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