AOL is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc.
TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare.
Michael Birch OBE is a British computer programmer and entrepreneur. Birch has helped co-found several startups including Blab, BirthdayAlarm.com, Ringo.com, and social networking site Bebo. Birch sold Bebo, his most lucrative business, which he started with his wife, Xochi Birch, to AOL in March 2008 for $850 million. Later he purchased the company back for $1 million. Birch has made several large donations to charitable organizations, including charity:water.
Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is an American venture capital firm. Accel works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional operating funds in London, India and China.
Bebo was an American social networking website that originally operated from 2005 until its bankruptcy in 2013 and relaunched in February 2021. The site relaunched several times after its bankruptcy with a number of short-lived offerings, including instant messaging and video streaming, until its acquisition by Amazon in July 2019 when it was shut down. It was announced in January 2021 that it would be returning as a new social media site the month after. By May 2022, it had once again been shut down, without having ever left beta testing.
Thoma Bravo, LP, is an American private equity and growth capital firm with offices in San Francisco, Chicago and Miami. It is known for being particularly active in acquiring software companies and has over $120 billion in assets under management. It is the successor to the firm Golder Thoma & Co., which was established in 1980 by Stanley Golder and Carl Thoma. Thoma Bravo is led by managing partners Seth Boro, Orlando Bravo, Scott Crabill, Lee Mitchell, Holden Spaht and Carl Thoma.
A stalking horse offer, agreement, or bid is a bid for a bankrupt firm or its assets that is arranged in advance of an auction to act as an effective reserve bid. The intent is to maximize the value of its assets or avoid low bids, as part of a court auction.
Nirvanix is an American-based provider of business phone systems, VoIP services, hosted PBX, SIP Trunks, and cloud storage services headquartered in San Diego, California, United States. The company offers a variety of business phone solutions for small, medium as well as enterprise businesses. It also has a strong presence in public, hybrid and private cloud storage services with usage-based pricing. Based on previous service companies founded in 1998, Nirvanix shut down in October 2013. In July 2021 Nirvanix re-entered the business with $12 million funding.
Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, U.S. that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and client software. Dropbox was founded in 2007 by MIT students Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi as a startup company, with initial funding from seed accelerator Y Combinator.
Course Hero is an American education technology website company based in Redwood City, California which operates an online learning platform for students to access course-specific study resources and online tutors. Subscription or content contribution is required for students to use the platform.
Vista Equity Partners is one of the largest American private equity firms focused on financing and forwarding software, data, and technology-enabled startup businesses. Vista has invested in hundreds of companies, including Misys, Ping Identity, and Marketo.
Twilio is an American company based in San Francisco, California, which provides programmable communication tools for making and receiving phone calls, sending and receiving text messages, and performing other communication functions using its web service APIs.
Stripe, Inc. is an Irish-American financial services and software as a service (SaaS) company dual-headquartered in South San Francisco, California, United States and Dublin, Ireland. The company primarily offers payment-processing software and application programming interfaces for e-commerce websites and mobile applications.
Balderton Capital is a venture capital firm based in London, UK, that invests in early-stage, technology and internet startup companies in Europe. It is considered to be among the four-biggest venture capital firms in the English capital.
Socialthing was a social news aggregator that founded in 2007 and was acquired by AOL the following year for an undisclosed sum. Later renamed AOL Lifestream, the service was a central part of AOL's unsuccessful attempt to compete against upstart social networks such as Facebook.
Pluralsight, LLC is an American privately held online education company that offers a variety of video training courses for software developers, IT administrators, and creative professionals through its website. Founded in 2004 by Aaron Skonnard, Keith Brown, Fritz Onion, and Bill Williams, the company has its headquarters in Farmington, Utah. As of July 2018, it uses more than 1,400 subject-matter experts as authors, and offers more than 7,000 courses in its catalog. Since first moving its courses online in 2007, the company has expanded, developing a full enterprise platform, and adding skills assessment modules.
This page is a timeline of social media. Major launches, milestones, and other major events are included.
Snap Inc. is an American camera and social media company, founded on September 16, 2011, by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown based in Santa Monica, California. The company developed and maintains technological products and services, namely Snapchat, Spectacles, and Bitmoji. The company was named Snapchat Inc. at its inception, but it was rebranded Snap Inc. on September 24, 2016, in order to include the Spectacles product under the company name.
Eldridge Industries LLC is an American holding company headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut, with offices in New York City, London, and Beverly Hills. Eldridge makes investments in various industries including insurance, asset management, technology, sports, media, real estate, and the consumer sector.
