Impermium was a cyber-security startup company based in Redwood City, California, which provided anti-spam and account protection services for Internet websites. In 2014, the company was acquired by Google.
The company was founded in 2010 by Mark Risher, Vishwanath Ramarao, and Naveen Jamal, who met while managing the anti-spam systems for Yahoo! Mail.
The company protected more than 1.5 million sites worldwide, including Disqus, Livefyre, Pinterest, Squarespace, and Tumblr from attacks including fraudulent registrations, login and account hijacking, malicious user-generated content, and other forms of Social spam. [1] Impermium received venture capital financing from funds including Accel Partners, Greylock Partners, Highland Capital Partners, Morado Ventures, and the Social+Capital Partnership. [2]
In January 2014, Google announced the acquisition of the company, [3] merging its team and technology into its own anti-spam group. [4]
LinkedIn is a business and employment-focused social media platform that works through websites and mobile apps. It launched on May 5, 2003. It is now owned by Microsoft. The platform is primarily used for professional networking and career development, and allows jobseekers to post their CVs and employers to post jobs. From 2015 most of the company's revenue came from selling access to information about its members to recruiters and sales professionals. Since December 2016, it has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft. As of March 2023, LinkedIn has more than 900 million registered members from over 200 countries and territories.
Matthew Charles Mullenweg is an American entrepreneur and web developer living in Houston. He is known for developing and founding the free and open-source web software WordPress, and its parent company Automattic.
Meebo was an instant messaging and social networking service provider. It was founded in September 2005 by Sandy Jen, Seth Sternberg, and Elaine Wherry, and was based in Mountain View, California. Initially the company offered a web-based instant messenger service, extending its offer in more general online chat and even social networking directions. In June 2012, Google acquired Meebo to merge the company's staff with the Google+ developers team.
Wetpaint was an Internet company and a wholly owned subsidiary of Function(X). Founded in 2005, Wetpaint both published the website Wetpaint Entertainment, focused on entertainment news, and developed a proprietary technology platform, the Social Distribution System, that was used to provide analytics for its own website as well as other online publishers. Wetpaint began as a wiki farm, hosting wikis using its own proprietary software, before moving into hosting of professional content in 2010. Wetpaint's wiki-hosting component was spun off completely in 2013 after being purchased by Wikifoundry. Wikifoundry ceased operations in June 2021, decommissioning the original Wetpaint wiki-farm after 15 years
Postini was an e-mail, Web security, and archiving service owned by Google since 2007. It provided cloud computing services for filtering e-mail spam and malware, offered optional e-mail archiving, and protected client networks from web-borne malware.
AVG Technologies is a brand of cybersecurity, privacy, performance and utility software applications for desktop computers and mobile devices developed by Avast, a part of Gen Digital. AVG was a cybersecurity software company founded in 1991 and it merged into Avast following an acquisition in 2017. It typically offers freeware, earning revenues from advertisers and from users that upgrade to paid versions for access to more features.
Redpoint Ventures is an American venture capital firm focused on investments in seed, early and growth-stage companies.
Canva is an Australian global multi-national graphic design platform that is used to create social media graphics and presentations. The app includes readymade templates for users to use. Creating an account and using Canva is free, although the majority of high quality elements will need to be paid for in order to download one's project. The app also offers paid subscriptions such as Canva Pro and Canva for Enterprise for additional functionality. In 2021, Canva launched a video editing tool. Users can also pay for physical products to be printed and shipped. Examples of products that can be made on Canva include yard signs, business cards, chore charts, album art, ebooks, infographics, menus and invitations. The company has announced it intends to compete with Google and Microsoft in the office software category, with website and whiteboard products. On December 7, 2022, Canva launched Magic Write, which is the platform’s AI-powered copywriting assistant. On March 22, 2023, Canva announced its new Assistant tool, which makes recommendations on graphics and styles that match the user's existing design.
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. As of April, 2023, Andreessen Horowitz ranks first on the list of venture capital firms by AUM.
Path was a social networking-enabled photo sharing and messaging service for mobile devices that was launched in 14 November 2010. The service allows users to share up to a total of 50 contacts with their close friends and family. Based in San Francisco, California, the company was founded by Shawn Fanning and former Facebook executive Dave Morin.
SimilarWeb Ltd. is an Israeli web analytics company specializing in web traffic and performance. Headquartered in Tel Aviv, the company has 12 offices worldwide. Similarweb went public on the New York Stock Exchange in May 2021.
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.
Optimizely is an American company that provides digital experience platform software as a service. Optimizely provides A/B testing and multivariate testing tools, website personalization, and feature toggle capabilities, as well as web content management and digital commerce.
Spark Capital is a venture capital firm in the United States, responsible for early-stage funding startups of consumer, commerce, FinTech, software, frontier, and media sectors. It has branches in San Francisco, Boston, and New York City.
Cyren Inc. was a cloud-based, Internet security technology company providing security as a service and threat intelligence services to businesses until it announced its collapse in February 2023. Cyren provided web security, DNS security, cloud sandboxing, inbound/outbound anti-spam services, real-time phishing detection and blocking, ransomware protection, URL filtering, IP reputation for email, malware attack detection, anti-malware and IP intelligence, botnet attack prevention, and cloud threat lookup. Cyren also provided endpoint protection, including anti-malware for mobile devices, URL filtering for mobile devices, and inbound/outbound Internet of Things (IoT) gateway protection. Major corporate clients using Cyren's services include Microsoft, Google, Check Point, Dell, T-Mobile, and Intel.
Wealthfront Inc. is an automated investment service firm based in Palo Alto, California, founded by Andy Rachleff and Dan Carroll in 2008. As of 2022, Wealthfront had $27 billion AUM across 470,000 accounts.
For the sociological term, see Social capital.
Freestyle Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm based in San Francisco, California. General Partners Dave Samuel and Jenny Lefcourt are both entrepreneurs who entered venture capital after founding multiple companies. The firm was founded in 2009 and typically invests in 10-12 companies per year with an average investment between $1.5 million to $3 million. Previous investments include Intercom, Patreon, Narvar, Digit, Betterup, Airtable and Snapdocs.