Silicon Valley based Like.com managed to raise a monster round of financing at just the right time: $32 million in Series C round of funding that closed in August, led by Menlo Ventures. Crosslink Capital also joined the round, as well as all previous investors. Prazan Vazirani from Menlo also joined the company’s board of directors.
The valuation was north of $100 million, says a source close to the company. All employees with vested shares had the opportunity to sell shares in this round as well, although I don’t know what percentage of the $32 million went off the table.
Like.com is a visual search engine that matches pictures of things to items for sale that look similar. The service launched in November 2006, and revenue has steadily grown. The company took a year to reach a $1 million annual run rate. Today, we’ve heard, they are over a $20 million revenue run rate.
The company is launching a UK version of the service this week at like.co.uk. They also have an iPhone application called LikeThis that lets users take a picture of an item and receive an email with results for similar items for sale.
Seems like companies are starting to scramble for that last bit of funding that vcs are giving out. that’s great for the ones that manage to secure it, but it has bad news written all over it for the guys that can’t…
Peter
http://www.thewebwar.com
Not necessarily
… it’s perhaps better to not have vc funding than not being able to deliver expected results.
Eh maybe its just me but I’d rather have, try, and fail than not have at all and still fail.
congrats, munjal!
Congrats to Ashish and the rest of the team!
Unfortunately, even companies that successfully secure a large round in the current economic environment ensure a longer life. A better future isn’t guaranteed if these companies don’t have viable businesses with solid business models.
Congrats to the employees of iLike, and treat each dollar like the last.
Best of luck!
Curtis
Sorry… I wasn’t clear…. it seems iLike has a solid business model. Way to do things the right way!
Curtis
iLike and Like are two different websites.
$20m in revenues / year? What’s their monthly burn rate? Why dilute equity if you are profitable?
$20M RUN RATE. Are you fucking retarded?
Wow good funding in bad times. Good job guys !!
What kind of an exit could they realistically get ?
beautiful domain name. i “like it.” a name like that could be a visual search engine for everything. i think more people right now are more interested in online businesses that can generate income and not expendible income. theres also not gonna be alot of online shopping in a broken economy. company really needs to diversify its offerings.
HappyLocator.com
FailLocator.com
What the hell is the deal with these locator sites in these comments? I keep seeing them and they have locator site for every fucking thing! Someone please explain…
KelsLocator.com
http://professi...ofile/mylocator
Super Congrats to Jillian. The others did a good job too.
Congratst to the team.
Obviously the term sheet was signed before the downturn. We won’t really see the impact on VC financings for another few weeks or months until the deals agreed before the crash that are being papered finish up.
Congrats Munjal, like Randy. I’m sure Ranjith would congratulate Munjal as well.
I don’t know if they truly have a business model. From what I see so far, it just a huge arbitrage operation with affiliate commissions.
are they hiring? did they say what they plan to use the funds for?
They’ll use the funding to hire more developers in India to properly differentiate between a beer can and a human being.
Does this mean we are back on track, or are the funding profitable companies…
Congratulations to Munjal,Azhar, Burak and to rest of all the team. Keep rocking.
As the CEO of Pixsta I just wanted to congratulate Munjal on the achievement to raise such a large round following previous investments of $20m.
It is important to point out that Munjal is not alone on in the space of Visual Search. A company in London called PIXSTA, which Straub Ventures seed has been going for 2.5 years and has developed strong technologies to do the same as like.com. If you are interested have a look on http://www.pixsta.com but equally on the UK, German and French site of the search service. As like.com , Pixsta is currently positioned in the fashion and life style category.
I sound like a broken record, but the funding environment is not that bad. We’ve talked to a ton of VCs and Angel Investors for our round, and their checkbooks are still open. This is just another example.
something doesnt sound right here. They have revenues of 20m per year. are they burning everything they earn, that they have to go for such a big round of funding.. this will dilute the equity big time… anyway congrats to their team.
“Welcome international visitors. We’re sorry, but currently our merchants only deliver to U.S. addresses.”
and why does that prevent this company from showing me products ?
what will I do ? sue them for showing but not delivering ?
I’m a big fan of visual search – congratulations to Like.com. Time will tell but this could be the high watermark for a little while, in terms of VC spend.
The difference between this and a lot of other startups is that Like.com does have an eight-figure revenue stream. Makes it easier for VCs to invest. There are bargains out there.
are these investors CRAZY?
“Welcome international visitors. We’re sorry, but currently our merchants only deliver to U.S. addresses.”
Loool. What if i have a realtive in California and order the stuff there? Insane.
I just tried this for the first time with men’s clothes. Unless I’m missing something, the technology is crap. I highlight a feature (e.g. a pocket on a shirt) and tell it to search for similar features and color – it brings backs tons of shirts without pockets and in completely different colors. Same issues with shoes and other items.
It does a good job at bringing together like items from across different sites. Though I don’t see why advanced visual matching technology is required. Pulling together “brown sandals” on a page can be done with simple product descriptors, and like.com isn’t even very accurate at matching within this category (try it. Click on a brown sandal and see what you get back for “similar”).
Way to go Munjal!
As the CEO of Picitup who’s also operating a visual shopping engine ( see http://www.pici...tup/picShop.jsp ) we are glad to see that image recognition based compnaies are gaining momentum..!
What would be really interesting to know is – are they profitable? Yes they could be generating $20M in rev but how much of this is actually going to the bank after TAC ? Also, is this valuation of $100M after money or before money?
Why does a startup that’s making $20 million a year need more funding!?
It strikes me that the same retarded stuff gets repeated. While Munjal does put up a good talk, history provides better insight.
His former company took in $64 million in funding, and (kudos for this) was one of the first to support ebay sellers. However, the company went from 80% + market share and a ton of money in the bank to almost no market share nor money a few years later while he remained CEO throughout this.
Basically, he has no experience creating or running a successful company. Running a company that simply burns through cash is not a sign of success. Getting your name in publications is not either.
I wish them the best of luck, but once again VCs are being retarded with other’s money. Not to be confused with the credit industry.
Interesting to see price comparison engines still getting funding. Note that ebay announced shopping.com was finding it harder to get traffic these days as Google was hitting them hard on search traffic. Wonder if like.com might have similar issues? Don’t know why they needed $20m either – surely you can break even without needing this much cash?
It’s a real shame… Like.com had a good model, a solid plan, a smart exec team… and then came the market downturn.
Over the last few months, Munjal has fired the marketing teams, the sales team and the biz dev teams in a desperate attempt to slow the rapid hemorrhage of cash. (How do you monetize a site after cutting loose the people driving the revenue?).
Despite cutting the headcount from 40 down to 20, rumor has it that the burn rate is still close to $3 million per month with revenues in the tens of thousands and an ever-shrinking market share.
It’s just a matter of time before Peter Rip and company hand Mr. Shah his walking papers, but will it be in time to salvage some portion of their investment? Probably not.
As I said, a real shame…