Docstoc Says Big Round Of Funding Coming; Counting Unhatched Chickens
Michael Arrington
31 comments »
Here’s an interesting email that was forwarded to me this morning: Docstoc, a Los Angeles based startup that we wrote about in early July, says they are close to closing a “substantial” round of funding from a number of potential investors. There’s something to that saying that you shouldn’t count your chickens before they hatch, but the fear and caution genes are rarely found in the entrepreneur’s genetic makeup. There was additional information in the email we’re not publishing as it was too sensitive. We did not receive a reply back from the company regarding this.
From the video we embedded in our earlier post, Docstop looks to be a competitor to Scribd and allows users to post and discuss documents in various file formats. Beyond that, we’ll have to wait for the launch.
We are about to close another substantial round of financing from at least one, if not all, of the following investors 1) one of the co-founders of mysapce 2) the angel investors in www.baidu.com and the head of mp3.com that lead the company to its 400M acquisition – at least one of these players will lead our next round, and all three parties may participate. Financing is expected to close by the end of the month.
It it only us who have not been funded yet!!?
Why did Scribd put embed links?
They fear Adobe sue them tons of money.
If I was any of those investors, I’d be pissed.
i’ve checkd out the beta, and i think investors will be lining up for this sort of thing. scribd will have to move over and make room.
Well, although I definitely agree that you shouldn’t count your chickens before they hatch, one would expect that this kind of disclosure has the approval of the investors and that all that’s left is inking the deal, and if that’s the case, I doubt the investors mind a bit of buzz and suspense before the announcement.
Then again, if the email contains even more sensitive information, and the email states “at least one of these will invest” - meaning they don’t know for sure who will - it doesn’t sound as if things are conclusive enough to be making this kind of pre-announcement.
BTW the link to docstock.com is missing the H in HTTP
And I mispelled docstoc.com (!!!)
(Sorry for the double post… )
Will be interesting to see how quickly Docstoc send their fanboys over to create even more buzz and hype on this thread. The amount of their fake comments on the last post was so over the top and obvious.
Social network for documents what next, how much will people talk about PDFs!! Shame docstoc can’t just try to launch their own product with taking shots at scribd at every available opportunity
i feel docstoc is going to be a very exciting web presence when it launches wide.
It’s not necessarily taking shots at Scribd. When Pepsi was launched there was just as much comment about Pepsi & Coca-Cola. Healthy competition leads to a better overall product for the end-user. And who’s to say that DocStoc doesn’t have a better product? Without trying the website, one can’t really pass judgment and call everyone who posts here a “fanboy”.
I say congratulations to the people who are running the show at DocStoc, it’s an example of how hard work and great ideas are paying off.
The limited amount I’ve been able to see of docstoc is impressive. Never been a huge advocate of some of scribd’s limited features so I think docstoc may have a leg up.
It will be fun to watch the competition in this space. Good luck to all participating.
“Loose lips sink ships”
Send out the press release when it is secured. Putting confidential stuff out like this can really take an ugly turn.
What if one of the co-founders of myspace and the angel investors in http://www.baidu.com and the head of mp3.com don’t want people to know that they are looking at your company? What if they are working on a deal somewhere else and this news alters that deal.
But hey what do I know.
cheers
scott
Scott I agree with you, I have a feeling the investors may not like this premature PR.
I tried beta not so great. They ripped off a lot of features from ThinkFree. And you know what, ThinkFree owns them still: http://www.thinkfreedocs.com/
I’m not sure why this is news or even deserves the attention of TechCrunch? How about a story WHEN they get funded instead of they MIGHT get funded. There are hundreds of companies who are “just about” to get funded and it isn’t real until the ink is dry and the funds are in the bank account.
“Never base your budget requests on realistic assumptions, as this could lead to a decrease in your funding. “
I’m excited to see what unfolds for DocStoc. What’s the big deal about mentioning potential investors? Whether they get funded or not, its a story.
Any press is good press for any company….especially when its press about getting funding from VCs. docstoc.com should be able to compete with scribd, especially with diverse formats allowed and creating a sound community of proffesionals using the site. Just my thought.
They guy at docstoc who sent that email probably just drove away all the investors mentioned in that post. Investors constantly look at several deals, and only a few close. I doubt they’d like press about them about to invest in something. Its tacky, puts pressure on them, and lets others know what deals they are considering. Not a good move at all in my opinion.
DocStop and Scribd are both dumb. They are putting a layer of complexity between you and the documents you want by putting them into flashpaper, pdf, or whatever other format.
People already share documents and people already search for documents using this revolutionary site called Google. It’s really amazing. You go in an type what you’re looking for and you can find it. I wonder how much funding this Google company has raised?
Seriously guys, Scribd and DocStop serve no point. If you want to search books, you use Google’s Book Search. If you want to search general documents uploaded by normal people, you use Google.
I don’t even understand the Scribd comments, the product is is very different from my view. Scribd is like digg for docs and docstoc is more about professional docs. Its like saying milk is the same as beer. Furthermore, using the Pepsi comparison above, Coke is doing just fine with Pepsi around, and they are much closer products. As a business professional myself, who wouldn’t want professional documents that you don’t have to pay a fee for as templates for your own work? As for the TechDumpster comment about Google, that is the exact purpose of docstoc, when you Google “marketing report” you either get crap or have to pay. And it’s hard to find anything of substance with all the click fraud and faking the search results out there. I think docstoc sounds like a clear solution to a problem.
Mike,
You made the comment “They ripped off a lot of features from ThinkFree. And you know what, ThinkFree owns them still”
While we at ThinkFree did have some engagement with the founder of DocStoc we never did own them. If they are in deed getting a healthy round of financing, so much the worse for us;)
As for ripping us off, we went into the engagement thinking that there would be a mutually beneficial sharing of information. And so far that is what we got.
news of this was already posted in mashable on July 30th, 2007.
http://www.mashable.com/2007/07/30/docstoc/
I guess they’ll be keeping their fingers crossed for the next month.
Can’t wait to see if they actually get the funding - I hope you post an update to this whenever the time comes.
Brilliant Idea! Can’t wait til the launch….
I really don’t understand all the haters? This is a free market, it’s all about excercising choice and allowing competition. People will gravitate toward the product that works best for them, so all of the speculative and negative comments are really just silly. Sounds like the DocStoc founders did their due dilligence and not suprisingly are getting some attention by big backers. No one has a stake in this other than the DocStoc owners so why doesn’t everyone just sit tight, wait for the launch and see what happens - sheesh!
I am very excited for this launch and sharing it with my huge database.
Cool that Docstoc is getting funding. I would say it’s close to a “done deal” or they wouldn’t have put the lendors out there like they did.
Can us common folk invest?
It will be interesting to see how Docstoc competes with other sites in the same market. From what I have seen and heard I am very impressed.
If funding manifested itself by merit alone, Docstoc would have absolutely nothing to worry about.