If the popular memes are to be believed then The Founders Fund has the midas touch, thanks to some savvy investing by Peter Thiel and the bad boy Sean Parker. The latest buzz is around David “Smoking” Sacks’ new company, Geni. Given their track record it is kinda hard not to be impressed with this investing team, but there is one little investment that stands out in garish constrast.
Remember Engage.com, that got funded a while ago. If Alexa trends (I know they are as reliable as a dating profile) don’t portend good things for a company that launched with much fanfare back in July 2005. We checked it on Compete.com, and things don’t look much different either. Everything has pretty much flatlined. This is in sharp contrast to Thiel and Parker’s track record of investing/starting hypergrowth companies.
What got me interested in them was this recent funding announcement by OkCupid, another dating site which is offering listings for free. I am most curious to see what the future holds for many of these start-ups that are competing with leviathans like Yahoo and Match.com. It be interesting to see what comes out of iDate 2007, an Internet dating conference that kicks off in Miami tomorrow.
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