i/o Ventures

i/o Ventures
Limited liability company
Industry Venture capital
Founded 2009
Headquarters San Francisco, California, U.S.
Products Business Incubator, Investments, Venture capital, Growth capital
Number of employees
 5
Website www.ventures.io

i/o Ventures is a Silicon Valley-based startup funding firm, started in 2009 by Aber Whitcomb (co-founder of MySpace), Ashwin Navin (co-founder of BitTorrent), Jim Young (co-founder of Hot Or Not), and Paul Bragiel (co-founder of Lefora). i/o Ventures provides seed money, advice, and connections during a 6-month program conducted at company's San Francisco Mission District office. The fund receives 8% of the company's common stock on average.[1] i/o Ventures typically invests $25,000 in its startups.[2]

Mentorship

i/o Ventures emphasizes its mentorship on its website and the availability of experienced entrepreneurs to its startups. Its roster of well-known mentors is noteworthy including:

Portfolio companies

On October 12, 2010, i/o Ventures held its first ever "Demo Day" announcing its first six investments.[3] The number of startups in the initial "class" were six:

Appbistro — A marketplace for business applications on Facebook, including user reviews and a payments service. The company says 25,000 applications have already been installed through its marketplace, and it’s earning $5,000 in monthly revenue (it takes 30 percent of the purchase fees). It also just announced the Appbistro AppStores program, where other application platforms like Constant Contact and Twilio can customize Appbistro to create their own app stores.

Socialvision — A tool for publishers to add chat capabilities to their videos. SocialVision is testing out the functionality on a site called YouTube Social. The company says users spend an average 12 minutes per session on YouTube Social, compared to 6 minutes on YouTube proper. It’s also supposedly working with DirecTV on proof-of-concept tests.

Anomaly Innovations — A company that tries to uses algorithms to determine what’s most relevant in a stream of content. Its first site is The Cadmus, which sorts your Twitter stream by relevance.

Damn The Radio — A service that helps businesses and brands design campaigns that reward users for promoting products on social networks. For example, a band could offer a free song to listeners who post a Facebook update about their new album. The company says it already has 2 million active users, and its clients include Sony Music, Wrangler Jeans, and the Dave Matthews Band.

Skyara — A not-yet-launched marketplace for finding activities. The goal is to help people find exciting activities that are off the beaten path. If you know how to bartend, you could offer to train someone, or if you’re a good kayaker you could take someone with you. The people offering activities will be able to accept payment, a charity donation, or just help out for fun.

AppRats — Builds Facebook apps for YouTube stars (and wannabe YouTube stars) to help them interact with fans and make money. AppRats says it already works with 50 of the top 100 YouTube stars.

See also

References

  1. ↑ http://ventures.io/info/about. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  2. ↑ "i/o Ventures Frequently Asked Questions".
  3. ↑ "IO Ventures launches startups from a San Francisco coffee shop".

External links

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