Dan Shapiro isn’t ready to spill the beans on what he’s up to just yet, but word is already on the street that he’s rounded up a great group of folks to back him on his next venture: Sparkbuy. Dan was previously CEO of Ontela, acquired by Photobucket about a year ago). We think the continue…
When it rains, it pours… TechCrunch just broke the news of our investment in Estately alongside 500 Startups, Founders Fund, Jeff Clavier and AngelList’s Naval Ravikant. We’ve been tracking CEO Galen Ward’s progress for a while and just love how he thinks about building an online business. He’s now raised slightly more than $1MM in continue…
There’s plenty of news out about the deal (see here, here, and here) but I wanted to pile on with a quick shout-out to the Nearlyweds! team on their acquisition of Chicago-based OneWed. The company has been executing like crazy on their core business since we first invested a year ago, striking deals with some of continue…
One of Andy’s favorite expression around Founders Co-op is “GFA” (Get Fucking Aggressive). Here’s a mini-case study on that from the past 24 hours: Yesterday afternoon FC portfolio company AppStoreHQ reached out to Jolie O’Dell at Mashable to get her take on AppESP, an on-device personalized app discovery engine for Android they’d just released to public continue…
Almost 15 years ago I headed up the effort to build outdoor retailer Patagonia’s first online retail store. About 20 minutes ago the company released its first native iPhone app, offering a full branded retail experience on the world’s coolest smartphone. Best of all, the app was built by the rockstars at Sprella, a mobile continue…
I have no connection to this company – I just think what they’re doing is extremely cool. Instead of paying $300 or more for “designer” eyeglasses, shop at Warby Parker and pay just $95 per pair delivered, plus they’ll give one pair of glasses to someone in need (via partners like RestoringVision) for every pair continue…
One of the best parts of being an early-stage investor is having a regular excuse to meet with entrepreneurs and learn about what they’re up to. I also love reconnecting with teams I’ve met with previously to hear how things have changed (which they always have). This afternoon I sat down with a very smart continue…
A few months ago the AppStoreHQ team noticed a spike in visits from The New York Times. We checked our referrer logs and discovered a very flattering description of our iPhone app search offering in this article. This morning we saw a similar bump and wondered if the same piece had been rediscovered. Instead, we continue…
The clever guys at Cooler Planet keep coming up with new ways to shine a light on the U.S. market for residential and commercial solar panel installations. Here’s their latest: a real-time display (anonymized, of course) of the savings estimates provided to consumers and businesses using their solar system cost estimator. You can see an continue…
A few months back a friend here in Seattle asked if I’d like to help out with a new non-profit idea he’d been cooking up. My friend – Digvijay Chauhan – had worked in the U.S. for years, first at Microsoft and later as co-founder and CTO of AskMe. But he was born and raised continue…