RSS is the new HTTP it seems, and the high and mighty of Silicon Valley are lining up to invest in RSS related companies. Never mind clear RSS models are yet to evolve! Mitsui invested in Feedster last week. The latest it seems to be Sequoia Capital which may have invested in a what seems to be a Feedburner competitor, SimpleFeed. The Los Altos-based start-up describes itself as a company that uses RSS as a marketing tool/channel. This weekend, I was doing some research on various podcasting related investments, and clicked my way to Sequoia Capital’s website and got to Mark Kvamme’s bio – where I saw a name I have not heard before – Simplefeed. 
I checked out the Simplefeed’s website, but could not find any information on who the investors in the company which is headed by Mark Carlson, a software executive who has spent most of his life with “security related” companies. I have dropped a note to Carlson, but haven’t heard back from him. But from the looks of it, Simplefeed might be Sequoia’s latest investment. Stay tuned! By the way, Dave Winer says RSS is automated web-surfing! Dan Primack says the $1.02 investment was made back in June 2005. Meanwhile, the name of Simplefeed has vanished from Mr. Kvamme’s bio. Still no word from the company! This is very curious!
There has been interesting news about SimpleFeed and secure RSS feeds (together with a company called Reactivity):
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1855477,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594
Cheers!
yup… sequoia led a $1.02 million series a deal back in june…
For what it is worth, some time back I wrote a blog for O’Reilly on an application concept called Cornerscreen that is the marriage of RSS and Pointcast. Speaks pretty directly to Winer’s assertion that RSS is automated web surfing, and the market implications as well.
Check out the URL if interested: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/7219
p.s. on that site is another post that I wrote that envisions RSS as a core Web 2.0 platform.
Automated subscription is what it is all about.
Sequoia has taken the name down now from the page you mentioned…not sure why, if they have invested.
Sequoia also in on iKanos, which is in NYC this week for a roadshow. Om any thoughts or have you looked at iKanos? Looks promising in my view. Here is a quick overview of them:
http://techstockblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/ikanos-next-broadcom.html