Spock, the world’s largest people search engine, to use funding to expand team and infrastructure.
Menlo Park, CA (PRWeb) December 20, 2006 -- Spock Networks, Inc., the world’s largest people search engine, today announced that the company has received $7 million in a Series A funding round from Clearstone Venture Partners and Opus Capital Ventures. Funds will be used to expand hiring, increase the company’s infrastructure and accelerate product development. The company further announced the election of William Quigley, managing director at Clearstone, Ken Elefant, general partner at Opus Capital Ventures, and Siva Kumar, serial entrepreneur and CEO of the TheFind.com, to its board of directors.
Spock is developing a new kind of search engine that helps users find and discover people. With over one hundred million individuals indexed and millions added every day, Spock is building the largest and most comprehensive people specific search engine. Spock expects to publicly launch in 2007.
“If you look at the top searches at Yahoo or Google today you will find people – Britney Spears, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie - always at the top of those lists – clearly demonstrating large user interest in searching for people,” said William Quigley, partner at Clearstone Venture Partners. “Companies like Google and Yahoo mastered web search, Amazon conquered product search, and we believe Spock is well-positioned to deliver a compelling solution for people search,” Quigley said.
“Everyone is curious about what is said about them online. Who hasn’t googled their own name or someone they know?” said Ken Elefant, general partner at Opus Capital Ventures. “We were incredibly impressed with the Spock team with their tremendous experience. We believe they are approaching the challenge of searching for people in a very different and powerful way that will set them apart from the current general market approach to people search.”
“Spock is excited to be working with both Clearstone and Opus Capital Ventures to further advance our product development and team building efforts,” said Jaideep Singh, CEO and co-founder of Spock Networks. “We have built an impressive team with years of experience in search. The additional funds will enable us to expand faster and dramatically increase the scale of our growing infrastructure.”
About Clearstone Venture Partners
Clearstone Venture Partners is an early stage venture capital firm with offices in Santa Monica, CA, Menlo Park, CA, and Mumbai, India. Clearstone was an early investor in such well known companies as PayPal, NetZero, Overture, and CarsDirect. The firm has $650 million under management and is investing in its third fund in seed and early stage companies in the United States and India.
About Opus Capital Ventures
Opus Capital Ventures is a venture capital firm with more than $1 billion capital under management, investing in committed, in high integrity, committed entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs building early-stage technology companies. The team has participated in the successful outcomes of more than 80 companies (including 50 IPOs) in the U.S. and in Israel including AirGate PCS, Electronics for Imaging, FedEx, Genesys, Harmonic, Precept Software and Vantive. Opus Capital Ventures is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. For more info, please visit www.opuscapitalventures.com.
About Spock Networks, Inc.
Spock - http://www.spock.com – is developing a search engine that helps users find and discover people. With over one hundred million people already indexed and millions added everyday, Spock is building the broadest and deepest people specific search engine. Spock expects to publicly launch in 2007. Founded by Jaideep Singh, formerly of Clearstone Venture Partners, and Jay Bhatti, formerly of Microsoft, the team has extensive experience in search from leading companies including Friendster, Netscape, Yahoo, and Microsoft. Spock has received over $8 million in investments to date from Clearstone Venture Partners and Opus Capital Ventures.
For inquiries please contact:
Todd Sawicki, VP of Marketing
Spock Networks, Inc.
650-234-0400
www.spock.com
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