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Zvents Announces $7 Million in Series A Funding
VantagePoint Venture Partners Leads Round, With Existing Investors Red Rock Ventures and NetService Ventures Group Participating.
San Mateo, CA (PRNewswire) November 7, 2006 -- Zvents, the leading local event search technology firm, announced today that it has secured $7 million in series A financing led by VantagePoint Venture Partners. Previous investors Red Rock Ventures and NetService Ventures Group also participated. The funding will be used to expand Zvents' geographic coverage to major metro areas across the United States, and to grow its technical and business staff. David Carlick of VantagePoint Venture Partners and Laura Brege of Red Rock Ventures will join Paul Martino, CEO of Aggregate Knowledge, Richard Melmon, managing partner of NetService Ventures, and Ethan Stock, CEO of Zvents, on the Zvents Board of Directors.
Founded in March 2005 by Ethan Stock and Tyler Kovacs, the company has developed the Zvents Media Platform, a 'software as a service' product that provides next-generation local search and targeted advertising capabilities for local web publishers, including newspapers, broadcasters, ISPs, vertical interest sites, and portals. The platform was launched with the San Jose Mercury News in July 2006, and has since rolled out with the Denver Post, Miami Herald, and Contra Costa Times. Forthcoming 2006 metro launches include Boston and greater Los Angeles.
"Local is a huge growth area on the Internet today, for both relevant content and targeted advertising," said David Carlick, Managing Director at VantagePoint Venture Partners. "Zvents' search, content, and advertising solutions are enormously valuable to media firms looking for ways to become more relevant to their audience, and better monetize their content."
"We are excited to have VantagePoint Venture Partners join us as we continue to build the company," said Ethan Stock, Zvents CEO. "Their deep experience in advertising, social media, and search will be invaluable to us as we expand our national reach and create new and relevant local experiences online."
Concurrent with funding, Gordon Rios will join Zvents as CTO. Rios brings an extensive background in search and machine learning technologies to Zvents. Most recently a Principal Scientist for the Yahoo! Search team, he previously held senior technical and scientific positions at search technology vendor Inktomi and anti-spam firm ProofPoint. Rios holds dual masters degrees in operations research and computational finance from U.C. Berkeley.
About Zvents
Zvents is the leading event search technology company and developer of the Zvents Media Platform, an events search engine that powers media and publishers with dynamic local event content and a targeted, self-service advertising system. Zvents provides a complete and compelling user experience, enabling users to discover, contribute, share and promote events through their local media. The company aggregates event information from the open web and user-contributed content, and connects online editorial channels through event-related information. Zvents is based in San Mateo, California. For more information, visit www.zvents.com.
About VantagePoint Venture Partners
VantagePoint Venture Partners is among the most active and successful venture firms in the world with more than $4.0 billion of capital under management. The Firm invests exclusively in technology driven companies and is organized around deep expertise and resources in key areas of interest: CleanTech, Healthcare, Internet and Digital Media, and Mobile and Wireless technologies. VantagePoint is a multi-stage investor, investing in high growth businesses at all stages of development. The Firm believes in applying a hands-on and team oriented approach to companies of lasting value. The Firm supports each of its portfolio companies, including Internet investments in AllBusiness.com, Healthline.com, ReachLocal, RevCube with the resources of a dedicated team of VantagePoint professionals able to contribute a blend of company building, technology, operations, marketing, and corporate finance expertise. For more information: www.vpvp.com.
About Red Rock Ventures
Red Rock Ventures is a Palo Alto, California-based venture capital investment partnership specializing in seed and early-stage enterprise software companies. The general partners have extensive backgrounds as operating managers, entrepreneurs, founders and venture capital investors. Their record in successfully founding and/or financing high-technology companies has created substantial market value and investor returns for the past 20 years. Red Rock currently manages $220 million in committed capital. For further information, visit: www.redrockventures.com.
About NetService Ventures Group
NetService Ventures Group is a consulting and seed investment firm based in Menlo Park, California. Its partnership has deep experience in software, telecom, wireless, and Internet companies. The firm provides strategic advisory services to multinational telecom and media firms, and seed funds startups in consumer and enterprise mobile and internet services. For more information: www.nsv.com