Kieran O'Neill

Last updated

Kieran Lewis O'Neill (born 19 August 1987) is an English entrepreneur best known for founding several Internet companies.

He started one of the first video sharing websites, similar to YouTube, when he was 15 and sold it aged 19 for $1.25M. [1] He studied management at the University of Bath before dropping out to pursue business interests. [2]

He subsequently co-founded Playfire, the largest social network for video games. [3] Playfire raised $3.1M in funding from prominent investors including Niklas Zennström (the founder of Skype), Michael Birch (the founder of Bebo), Chris Deering (the former Chairman of Sony), William Reeve (the founder of LoveFilm) and others. [4] The company grew to over to 1 million users [5] and was subsequently acquired by a games retailer in May 2012. [6]

O'Neill was a co-founder and CEO of fashion startup Thread.com. British Vogue included Thread in their 2012 list of the top 100 fashion websites, saying the service offered personal styling online for free. [7] In June 2016, Beringea led a £4 million funding round with participation from existing backer Balderton Capital and a number of angel investors, bringing total funding for Thread to around $16 million. [8] Another funding round in October 2018 raised £17m, led by the fashion chain H&M which had also participated in the 2016 funding round. [9] Thread ceased trading and was placed in administration in 2022; at the same time, Marks & Spencer acquired Thread's brand and technology, and hired O'Neill alongside some former Thread staff. [10] [11]

O'Neill was born in Bermuda and moved to Winchester, England when he was 14. [3]

Related Research Articles

Zegna is an Italian luxury fashion house. It was founded in 1910 by Ermenegildo Zegna in Trivero, Biella of the Piedmont region of Northern Italy.

Lightspeed Venture Partners is an american venture capital firm focusing on multi-stage investments in the enterprise, consumer, and health sectors. Lightspeed invests in seed, early and growth-stage companies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fab (website)</span> American e-commerce company (2010-)

Fab is an e-commerce company founded in 2010. Once estimated at a worth of over $1 billion, in March 2015, the digital and ecommerce assets of Fab were acquired by PCH International for an undisclosed sum and has since been relaunched as a new entity with no interaction from the original founders.

Playfire was a social gaming networking website targeted towards core video game players. Playfire allowed users the ability to automatically track their in-game achievements, trophies, and gameplay, as well as earn rewards for playing their games.

CrowdStar is a former developer of Facebook and mobile games, based in Burlingame, California, United States and Dublin, Ireland. The company developed several titles for the Facebook platform, with some of its most popular titles being Happy Aquarium, Happy Pets, Wasteland Empires and It Girl, and a number of titles on mobile for the iOS, Android and Windows Markets, including Design Home, Fish WithAttitude, Phuzzle, Top Girl, and Covet Fashion. It was acquired by Glu Mobile in 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Flipkart</span> Indian e-commerce company

Flipkart Private Limited is an Indian e-commerce company, headquartered in Bengaluru, and incorporated in Singapore as a private limited company. The company initially focused on online book sales before expanding into other product categories such as consumer electronics, fashion, home essentials, groceries, and lifestyle products.

Andreessen Horowitz is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California.

Polyvore was a community-powered social commerce website headquartered in Mountain View, California. The company's virtual mood board function allowed community members to add products into a shared product index, and use them to create image collages called "Sets". They could browse other users' sets for inspiration, share sets with friends and interact with people through comments and likes. Due to the visual nature of the tool Polyvore was mostly used to build sets in the fields of home decoration, beauty and fashion. Online retailers, too, could upload their product images to Polyvore and link back to their product pages or use Polyvore to encourage users to showcase their products through such activities as board creation competitions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tripping.com</span>

Tripping.com, a subsidiary of HomeToGo, is an online search engine and review aggregator for vacation rentals. It aggregates over 10 million listings in more than 150,000 cities worldwide. It is based in San Francisco, California. Tripping.com partners with and displays listings from booking websites including Booking.com, HomeAway, Vrbo, FlipKey, Roomorama, Interhome, Novasol, Wimdu, ZenRentals, Bedycasa, WayToStay, Gloveler, HolidayVelvet, 9flats, AlwaysOnVacation, RedAwning, and Housetrip. Users can search by price, ratings, location and features and amenities.

Warby Parker is an American online retailer of prescription glasses, contact lenses, and sunglasses, based in New York City. Warby Parker was founded as primarily online retailer, but now sells primarily through approximately 160 physical retail store locations across the U.S. and Canada.

Scopely, Inc is an interactive entertainment company and mobile-first video game developer and publisher. The company is headquartered in Culver City, California, with offices across the US, EMEA and Asia.

Monica Vinader Ltd. is a British jewellery brand producing and retailing necklaces, pendants, earrings, rings, and friendship bracelets. It markets itself as crafted demi-fine jewellery positioned and priced in the "gap between fine and fashion jewellery".

Vacasa is an international vacation rental management company based in Portland, Oregon. It provides property management services for over 35,000 vacation rentals in North America, Belize, and Costa Rica. Vacasa manages properties in 34 U.S. states.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Urban Ladder</span> Furniture retailer

Urban Ladder is an omnichannel furniture and decor retailer based out of Bangalore, India. Urban Ladder currently has 3 stores in Bangalore and distribution across 75+ cities in India through its website.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lev Binzumovich Leviev</span> Israeli-Russian entrepreneur and investor

Lev Binzumovich Leviev is an Israeli-Russian entrepreneur and investor, founder of international venture capital firm LVL1, co-founder of Russia's largest social network VK.com and the Selectel data center network.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Instacart</span> Internet-based grocery delivery service

Instacart is an American retail company that operates a grocery delivery and pick-up service in the United States and Canada. The company offers its services via a website and mobile app. The service allows customers to order groceries from participating retailers with the shopping being done by a personal shopper.

Nykaa is an Indian e-commerce company, founded by Falguni Nayar in 2012 and headquartered in Mumbai. It sells beauty, wellness and fashion products across websites, mobile apps and 100+ offline stores. In 2020, it became the first Indian unicorn startup headed by a woman.

Craftsvilla is an Indian e-commerce portal that sells ethnic apparel, footwear, fashion accessories, beauty products, handcrafted home accessories and other ethnic fashion and lifestyle products. The company is headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emily Weiss</span> American business executive

Emily Weiss is an American businesswoman. She is the founder and former CEO of the cosmetics company Glossier and the blog Into the Gloss. She was featured in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2015. In 2019, she was included in Time magazine's "Next 100".

Chalhoub Group is a privately held luxury goods retailer and distributor, headquartered in Dubai, UAE.

References

  1. ↑ "Dotcom student to make millions". BBC News. 4 June 2007. Retrieved 4 June 2007.
  2. ↑ "Tycoons of Tomorrow #4: Kieran O'Neill". The Gateway . Archived from the original on 1 January 2018. Retrieved 2 November 2017.
  3. 1 2 "Playfire: The social network dedicated to gamers". Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 17 August 2011.
  4. ↑ "Confirmed: Gamer social network Playfire secures $2.1m Series A".
  5. ↑ "Playfire Hits A Million Users Of Its Analytics For Gamers". 24 February 2012. Retrieved 24 February 2012.
  6. ↑ "Playfire Acquired By European Games Retailer Green Man Gaming". 9 July 2012. Retrieved 9 July 2012.
  7. ↑ "Top 100 fashion websites". British Vogue. November 2012.
  8. ↑ O'Hear, Steve (June 2016). "Thread, the U.K. personal styling service for men, picks out £4M funding led by Beringea". TechCrunch. Retrieved 16 November 2016.
  9. ↑ Cook, James (16 October 2018). "AI-powered fashion sales company Thread raises £17 million in funding". The Telegraph. Retrieved 12 February 2020.
  10. ↑ "Goodbye". Thread. Retrieved 1 December 2022.
  11. ↑ Shearsmith, Tom (30 November 2022). "Marks & Spencer acquires IP developed by collapsed fashion marketplace Thread". TheIndustry.fashion. Retrieved 1 December 2022.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.