{ Sunday, March 14, 2010 }
Hunch is growing. We just closed a $12 million Series B funding led by Gideon Yu at Khosla Ventures, one of my favorite guys, whom I've known since he bought my prior company at Yahoo for a nickel and a smile. After Yahoo, Gideon was CFO at YouTube, heading up the $1.65 billion Google acquisition, then next was CFO at Facebook during the famous Microsoft investment (at a $15 Billion valuation!) and now is a partner with legends Vinod Khosla and Pierre Lemond at Khosla Ventures. Gideon is the world's most energetic and passionate guy; he came and talked to our whole team for several hours (in what we called the "reverse partner meeting") and will be joining us on our board.
While we had enough cash in the bank to take us out almost another year -- we run a very capital efficient operation, 12 employees, some not even taking salaries they're so gung ho -- there was a lot of enthusiasm for our financing and we decided it was time to go turbo. So turbo we went.
Hunch is like Amazon or Netflix recommendations, but for everything. To build the system, we needed a vast amount of data about people, their tastes and preferences, and the things that they like. Our ambition is to build the "taste graph" of the web, analogous to the "social graph", mapping every person on the web to every entity on the web (be that a hotel, or a tennis racket, poet, cookbook, etc.) and their affinity for that entity. You can see how you could take your Hunch taste profile and apply it to just about anything -- to find you a hotel in Dallas, or your true love on a dating site, or things you like on eBay or Etsy. We've spent the time since launch gathering that data, and we can now really build this out. You'll be seeing a bunch of new features coming soon!
Psyched? Yes. Yes, we are.
- Techcrunch: Hunch Takes $12 Million From Khosla Ventures, Adds Former Facebook CFO To Board Of Directors
- All Things D: Hunch Gets It Right, Adds a $10 Million Series B Round Led by Khosla Ventures
- Paidcontent: Decision-Making Site Hunch Raises $12 Million
LINK | 11:03 PM | TB
That's great news! I love the insights from the hunch twitter feed: Cheerleaders who read books are more likely to try meth (and so on) :).
Colin Nederkoorn | March 14, 2010 11:32 PMCongratulations on the new financing.
It is now everyone's hunch that Hunch will be BIG!!!
:)
Best,
Rajesh
Hunch financing. Sounds positive.Solid. Congrats! - founder @tweetbarrel
patrick | March 14, 2010 11:58 PMHey thanks all!
Caterina | March 15, 2010 12:04 AMGreat news. I just heard about it through a Facebook message from Loic Le Meur. Very interesting venture.
Dietmar Stefitz | March 15, 2010 1:00 AMIt's great news. It's a great site!
@EmJasminePick | March 15, 2010 3:01 AMHoly cats. Congratulations.
How incredible to have Yu on your board.
Good show.
Charlie Park | March 15, 2010 3:23 AMCongrats ! :)
Rodrigo A. SEPULVEDA SCHULZ | March 15, 2010 3:47 AMCongratulations Caterina. If you are in NYC over the next 3 months, let me know. Would love to catch up. C-
Cordy Swope | March 15, 2010 8:05 AMThere is huge room for improvement in the AI recommendations field, because all existing such systems suck big time. Amazon, Netflix, iTunes, you name it -- they can't seem to go beyond the elementary "you've liked this before, so here's something very similar which you are sure to like as well" approach.
From my Eminem collection iTunes can never infer that I also like the Canadian Tenors, or vice versa. But I do.
I hope Hunch will be able to make that connection.
atanas entchev | March 15, 2010 8:11 AMCongratulations. Hunch has grown so much and helped me make a lot of decisions (both big and small). I'm looking forward to what Hunch has planned for the future.
Sushi | March 15, 2010 12:10 PMCount me in! I am excited to see where hunch goes. The potential is incredible.
Shaun Kjar | March 16, 2010 3:11 PMHello all,
I am reading this from Paris, France. Down here we are very scared of that kind of products ...
They go counter what we call "libre-arbitre", the freedom for each of us to really decide what we like and what we do.
The problem is that your Hunch - if it turns out to work and be commercialy efficient - will not be a choice anymore ... it will in the future organize/impose you what you SHOULD like. Commercial firms will try to be as efficient as they can, and focus only on what you would most likely buy ... The only problem is that people do not have a clear idea of what they like, people taste changes a lot during their life!! Of course you can draw statistical patterns ... but we all know that the interest of this world is between the patterns ... the great artists, geniuses ... are not in the statistical patterns ... Think of these many times when you try a new thing and discover afterwards that actually yes, you like it! With Hunch, you will have less opportunity to discover radically new things for you ...
You make a parallel with DNA ... yes ... Hunch is like consanguinity ... it will create a dumb and poor word.
... But yes - financially speaking - nice shot from the cofounders ! Congrats.
Congrats, you have no idea how much I enjoy Hunch and at the same time am finding it more useful every time I stop by.
It's nice to see those with the deep pockets see Hunch having the same potential as the rest of us.
Jordon Cooper | March 25, 2010 5:40 PM{ Post a comment }
Congratulations! Looking forward to the great new features on hunch!
David K. Park | March 14, 2010 11:12 PM