December 31, 2007

Thiel Invests in Israeli Stealth Startup Hooja

Erick Schonfeld

8 comments »

Israeli search technology start-up Hooja has raised $1.5 million from some well known-investors, including Peter Thiel, one of the founders of PayPal, and an early investor in Facebook. Hooja, currently in stealth mode, is said to be developing a technology that enables content providers to access personal and social information about users, and the tech is related to text messaging. Thiel has also backed Friendster, LinkedIn and Slide, and manages the hedge fund Clarium Capital.

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Steel

December 31st, 2007 at 1:53 pm

Birds of a feather !
Miley Cyrus

December 31st, 2007 at 2:00 pm

Number 2!
charles

December 31st, 2007 at 2:01 pm

why are almost all startups now starting to sound alike. I know the internet is a vast land of potential but over kill is something i don’t think the founders of the net were thinking.

Just my two cents
ajf

December 31st, 2007 at 2:09 pm

Thiel put in a $125K from what I hear. Hooja lets you bookmark and rate meatspace from your phone and, I assume, make your ratings available to your friends. When I heard about it from an investor earlier this month, there was nothing about enabling “content providers to access personal and social information about users.” I’m not even sure what that means given that it’s UGC. The pitch, as I heard it, was that it was more about using the cloud to augment your own memory of places you visit. For example, you go to a restaurant and text your Hooja account with a rating. Then at some future time when you are looking for a restaurant in the same area, you can refer to your own ratings or those of friends. ‘Cause, lord knows, it’s hard to remember shit…

Anyway, not sure there is really anything to the Israeli thing other than that Na’ama Moran is Israeli. They setup offices in Palo Alto a few weeks ago (their jobs page indicates that that’s where they’re hiring.)
Zemode

December 31st, 2007 at 2:46 pm

Is this just Thiel investing individually or as part of the Founders Fund?
Gavin Schulz

December 31st, 2007 at 10:10 pm

What is the point of this company, seriously? How would they monetize, and how are they different from anything else!
file2fone.com

January 1st, 2008 at 1:36 am

How this model will work to access personal and social information about users?
VC Cafe

January 2nd, 2008 at 12:10 am

There’s not a lot known about Hooja, but I’ve just consolidated the reports from Globes, Techcurnch, alarm clock and venture beat on VC Cafe, where I cover Israeli startup news and vc deal flow.
Permalink: http://www.vccafe.com/2008/01/.....els-hooja/

Happy 08!