True Ventures

NewTeeVee on VodPod

Toni — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:45:21 +0000

Very interesting NewTeeVee post about VodPod’s recent stats.

AOL acquires Sphere

Jon — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 06:27:46 +0000

Congratulations to Tony and the entire Team at Sphere on the AOL acquisition. This is a spectacular accomplishment, and it is a testament to your outstanding efforts and creativity over the past few years.

Early on, you had the vision to correctly recognize the value of linking blog-based content with global mainstream media. You went on to build a powerful product to address this need and systematically signed up the world’s leading publishers as customers. Your customer list is long and distinguished, and it is one of the best that I am aware of in the Web 2.0 media market (AOL, CBS, CNN, NY Times, Reuters, WSJ, to name a few). You launched early and often, and you listened closely to market feedback, which many times influenced product and company direction. From the inside, your high product standards, dedication to customers, and truly remarkable ability to do more with less serve as incredible examples to entrepreneurs everywhere.

It has been a wonderful privilege to be an investor in Sphere.

From all of us at True, thank you and congratulations!!!

Meebo at SXSW

Shea — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 22:03:26 +0000

Meebo is the official live chat at SXSW Interactive. This official live chat service will enable attendees of any panel to discuss in real-time. Brings whole new meaning to the word interactive!

Meebo Rooms’ New Additions

Shea — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 01:41:31 +0000

The Meebo Rooms product now has a developer API, which allows creation of a Meebo Room on an individual’s website. With this new API, websites will be able to easily incorporate live messaging, and users will be able to interact in real time with their favorite sites.

Meebo Network is a new chat and advertising platform, which provides a network of premium community, media, and entertainment partners. Meebo will share 50pc of the Meebo Rooms ad revenue with these partners. Revision3, Piczo, RockYou, Social Project, and Tagged are all partners in the new Meebo Network.

Keep up the great work!

GoodReads Ranked #5 According To TIME

Shea — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 04:45:17 +0000

In their 50 Top Ten Lists for 2007, TIME ranked GoodReads #5 for their Top Ten Websites of 2007. GoodReads provides a platform for members to share their love of books, write reviews, read others’ reviews, and share recommendations with friends. We agree with TIME; it is one of our favorites too.

Knighthood Is Highly Addictive

Shea — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 04:20:28 +0000

Hive7’s Knighthood game has taken Facebook by storm. Max and team have created a highly addictive game where you can become a knight and rule your own kingdom. The game is free, available to all via Facebook, and, the more players that you recruit, the higher the status you attain, which may explain the rapidly increasing flood of interest in this application.

SendMe Mobile Partners with EMI for Mobile Content

Shea — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 05:27:24 +0000

If you want your cell phone ring to be B52’s Love Shack, that dream can now come true thanks to SendMe Mobile’s strategic agreement with EMI Music. EMI is one of the world’s largest independent music companies, and their agreement with SendMe Mobile adds more than 4,000 ring tones to their already extensive library. The new selection options include songs from artists such as Lily Allen, Corinne Bailey Rae, Beastie Boys, Lenny Kravitz & K.T. Tunstall.

Automattic Raises $29M Series B Round

Jon — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 07:32:20 +0000

We are thrilled to announce Automattic’s Series B round of financing with co-investors Polaris Ventures and Radar Partners, as well as new strategic investor The New York Times Company. True seed funded the initial round of $1M with Polaris and Radar, and the Series B round will enable additional product development to build a more exciting platform for the WordPress global community.

With 2.2 million blogs hosted on WordPress and over 100 million global uniques, Toni notes that Automattic is now larger than Facebook and Wikipedia. We here at True believe Automattic to be one of the most exciting privately held companies on the internet, but, of course, we are a bit biased :).

Om broke the news, but today’s WSJ and New York Times also discuss the transaction.

My favorite quote of all is from Matt’s Mullenweg’s blog, “That decision actually wasn’t hard. I couldn’t stop thinking about the opportunities, and it became clear that the road ahead was much longer than the road behind us.”

By far the most rewarding aspect of our business is watching a team of great entrepreneurs create. Toni, Matt, and the team are a tremendous inspiration for all of us at True.

Congratulations to Matt, Toni & the WordPress Team, and thank you for all of your hard work and dedication.

Sphere Is Always On

Shea — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 07:32:09 +0000

Always On recognized Sphere as one of the top 100 game-changing, digital media players in the Online Advertising Service Providers’ category.

Congratulations to Tony & the Sphere Team on their OnMedia Top 100 award!

WordPress Offers 3GB of Storage

Shea — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 05:00:07 +0000

WordPress now offers 3GB of storage per customer, which is significantly more than is offered by competitors TypePad (from Six Apart) & Blogger (from Google). This a 60x increase in free upload space. Automattic is passing along their savings from optimizing their use of Amazon’s S3 storage service to their end users. Thanks, Matt, Toni & Team!