MyBlogLog founder Eric Marcoullier sold his company to Yahoo in January 2007 for an estimated $10 million. He left Yahoo in July 2007.
Eric is now preparing to launch a new startup, Gnip. Details are scarce for now - Marcoullier isn’t saying what the new startup will do other than a hint on the site itelf - “Web 2.0 Infrastructure,” and a message that the service will launch in May.
The startup is already funded, he says, with a $1 million round from Foundry Group and SoftTech VC. Foundry Group’s Brad Feld and SoftTech VC’s Jeff Clavier are joining the board of directors of the company.
Gnip, being a backwards ping… could be just about anything. Maybe this is the reverse Technorati some of us have been looking for. (And again, I could be way off)
Also look at their logo.
3 circles looped/connected together…
Congrats, Eric!
If the success of MyBlogLog is anything to go by, this should be an interesting, and hopefully equally useful, new venture.
Eric’s LinkedIn profile says for Gnip:
“Launching new service enabling social services to more efficiently aggregate user data from other sites.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX2bqI–c-k
Compare the GNIP logo with the central element of the toy called Gnip Gnop presented in this video. It is exactly the same.
See this post from Brad Feld’s (one of the investing VCs) blog:
http://www.feld.com/blog/archi....._gnop.html
The name Gnip is definitely related to the game Gnip Gnop. No idea what that means though.
Congrats to Eric. That’s an exciting start to a new company. Gnip…. hmmm, mysterious.
Michael, what about the hint in the HTML title of gnip’s site?
“Gnip: We got $h*t to pop”
If that doesn’t give it all away, I just don’t know what does.
Michael, maybe you could sift through all your knowledge about startups and write a post about why entrepreneurs who sold their companies for lots of cash still need funding for their new startups? Are they unsure about the outcome? Risk aversion? Advantage of putting others’ money at risk? But why have their legs strapped by all these funding agreements? Or maybe the tradeoff is worth it?
I think that would be a really valuable piece of information…
Interesting name… interesting logo..
Gnip Gnop is Ping Pong backwards. It was a really cool game in the 1970’s. Also the reference to “Ping.” This is probably a reference to pinging, and infrastructure. So it ties in somehow.
audi wants its logo back
congrats Eric!
I love it! “Ping” spelled back words. I never really liked the word “Ping” anyway . . . it sounds dirty.
Congrats Eric!
Congrats Eric!
Eric will do that again.
Even more interesting is the evidence that can be found in the twitter stream of Brad Feld, new board member of Gnip.
In this one he discusses the sound of a ping-pong player in the background of a conference call, the day that the Gnip funding closed:
http://tinyurl.com/27daey
And in this one he twitters about how the current ping infrastructure is broken, and that the correct solution is found by never giving up:
http://tinyurl.com/2q9j9y
Eric is a brilliant entrepreneur that will definitely strike gold again… I’ll be watching this one closely. Congrats Eric!
Good look to him! Should do really well!
MikeT - it serves two purposes. First, raising money is a marketing event that gets you attention. Second, it is the best way to make sure that your idea is a reasonable one - if you can’t get third parties to invest, it’s a sign that the idea may not work.
Thank you, Michael.
Thanks x2 michael! for the input on @21!