Here’s an unconfirmed but well sourced rumor: silicon valley based Zazzle will be closing a second round of financing in the $30 million range, at a $300+ million pre-money valuation. The round is expected to be led by an as-yet-unnamed hedge fund. Kleiner Perkins (which led the company’s $16 million Series A round in 2005, is supposedly also particpating in the round. Look for confirmation from the company in the next couple of weeks.
The company competes with CafePress and others.
Awesome. You missed SkinnyCorp which owns Threadless which did $20 MM in revenue and $7 MM in pre-tax profit last year and has Insight Venture Partners as their lone investor.
It’s great to see TechCrunch feature companies that are actually offering real value and getting paid for it.
$30 million dollar search engine… It’s too hard for me to use. Sorry…. you can’t grab me. Not a fan of sassle.
LOL
You got to be happy when you get 30 million dollars but you have users thinking your stupid site is a search engine!
Thomas just got off the short bus.
search engine?
I swear the trolls are starting to use canned comments.
The name Zazzle sounds like something in a late night infomercial.
Order a Zazzle now and get a free Zazzle Pro!
I stumbled upon Zazzle five years ago when I returned from a heli-ski trip with a group of friends and I got stuck with the job of creating the t-shirt. The thought of going to a shop, ordering the design, getting sizes from everyone, collecting their money and then mailing it to them made me realize just how inebriated I must have been when I agreed to do it.
I did a Web search just looking for a local t-shirt printer and found Zazzle. In 10 minutes I uploaded the group picture, added text and graphics, published the design and sent the group the link to buy their own damn shirt.
I thought it was a friggen miracle. Saved me loads of time and hassle. Maybe it doesn’t like such a big deal these days, but if you consider this was five years ago and well before the KP money, it was pretty darned revolutionary.
Why am I going on and on about them? Swear I’m not a shill. Don’t work there and have no vested interest in the company. I tell this story all the time because I was so impressed and I believe this is the real future of Web businesses.
Maybe Web 3.0 will be about using the Web to make our lives easier. Transforming a time consuming, real world task into a streamlined, Web experience sounds a lot more like a real business than building a Web playground to share my pictures and favorite hobbies. Sites like Zazzle and more recently http://www.logoworks.com are leading this trend.
PS – Don’t work for, or have a vested interest in, Logoworks either.
I’ve always liked these guys. In fact, I’ll tell you when we launched our company in Seattle a few years ago selling PHYSICAL PRODUCTS somewhat related to Zazzle that most of the early Web2.0 crowd thought our business plan was too boring. Too “pedestrian”. Here we are barely two years later with real customers. Real cash. It’s a good feeling. However, now you’ve got us wondering up here…do we need to get back on the fund raising trail? I mean…$30 million is a lot of cash. And I’ve heard Art.com is going IPO soon. Hmm, better take another look at the war chest
It seems the stakes just keep getting higher!
Sorry, duncan…. Some of TC fans don’t like you either…
It does look like search engine if you look up find textbox.
If you like zazzle keep an eye on our company. http://www.epicturegift.com. Our new website http://www.buildagift.com will launch in November 2007.
I wonder what they will spend money on…
You can explore advantages of digital printing techonology on http://umadeup.com
Anyone has some experience with them? I think the idea is neat – I’m curious about the quality….