It’s a wonder to me how San Francisco based Mechanical Zoo, a startup founded by Max Ventilla (Google corp dev), Nathan Stoll (Google News) and Damon Horowitz (Perspecta), has managed to keep its social search product called Aardvark mostly out of the press these last few months. Even as it spreads virally via friend invitations in the private beta.
But that’s all going to end soon. The fifteen person company has raised $6 million (including an earlier angel round) in a highly anticipated venture capital financing led by August Capital. Additional investors include Baseline Ventures and a number of angels.
The company’s first product, Aardvark, is a social search engine that lets users ask questions that are distributed to the social graph for a quick and presumably high quality answers. I’ve spoken with a handful of people who have been using the product for the last month or more – every one of them is wildly enthusiastic about it.
The company won’t say when they’ll leave private beta. It’s clear that the quality of the user experience is based on having a number of real friends also using it, which means that private invitations is actually a perfect way to grow. So for now, if you want in to Aardvark, you have to know someone else who’s using the service (ok, it’s also on InviteShare, but that’s cheating).
congrats to these guys – it’s an awesome product being built by a great team. looking forward to the day they share it with the world.
Very cool. This would seemingly be a perfect fit as a widget or iphone app. Any news on Facebook/iphone application development?
Thanks!
The primary interface is an AIM bot. We’ve already got AIM for the iPhone. That’s enough.
I thought the purpose of aardvark was to posit questions via social graphs to your friends w/in that network? i.e, if there were an “aardvark” Facebook application, this would send a question throughout the graph to each friend within this network.
Further, the idea that AIM should be the only means of instant communication on the iphone (or any graph for that matter) simply because it existed first is just ridiculous. sorry.
maybe great product but why did they choose that domain name.
Because everyone knows how easy it is to remember! Goolge it? Pft. Just aardvarkim it! See! Easy!
Well maybe they will use thier money on also getting what the zoo needs for everyone that vists or works there safe!!!!!
because since it starts with aa, it sits at the top of your im list.
solid point
Great team, great product.
i’m not so sure that i buy into the idea of automating what is essentially primary research, but if these folks think that they can pull it off then i’d be happy to give them a few full pages of detail in competitive intelligence magazine (these types will devour such a model for source management)…please feel free to follow the link to my corporate site to ping me…
as for larger implications – sounds like a new way to rethink what glg is doing (at some level),.,or a tool for glg to use…not sure, need to know more about how sources are prioritized and evaluated, how assets are marked relative to each individual (not granular preferences, i mean the full individual as a node in the big site system)…
sorry, rambling…
I heart Aardvark. Awesome product, fun to use and a great team…sky is the limit.
Viva La Vark
I have used it and these guys are onto something new and different.
Technically it works surprisingly well for a new app in beta – they must have superior techies working on the details, not just marketing and sales guys – I am impressed so far and they are only at the beginning of the zoo alphabet (aa)!!!
I used this and think it’s ok, but i’m not crazy about it. You basically email a question to their address and wait 5-10-30 minutes for an answer. The answers are good, but i typically get the same person answering. Also, the wait time is killer (google searching handles 90% of my questions instantaneously, so only < 10% of my questions, which come up infrequently, will be better suited for this service … so don’t see the market). Good luck to them, looks like a great team, but given the niche of questions this service answers and the longer wait times, i just forgot about it and went back to web search.
metafilter anyone?
Oops..ZA already has a search/directory site call Aarvark..
http://www.aardvark.co.za
Ive also used the site and love it!!! For complex queries, there is nothing better. Tapping into the cumulative intelligence of their entire user base is really very powerful – and useful. The delivery is improving (response time, diversity of responders, etc) and will only get better as the user base grows. You have to try this product!
aardvark answers queries where google and other search engines dont do well. i use it about 5x a week.
i think it is a rubbish product! it is all hype and will soon die off. 6mil raised for this crap? gosh!