Pearltrees' core product centers on 'pearls' (bookmarks) that users assemble into topical 'trees' to organize and share content. The company uses those user‑assembled relationships to map topic and bookmark connections with a system called TreeRank and offers discovery via a 'related interests' button. Pearltrees says it has grown consistently at 15% per month and that users have created 15 million pearls assembled into 2 million trees. Last month the site reached 1 million unique visitors and 30 million pageviews. Launched in December 2009, Pearltrees plans continued multi‑platform development (already on the Web and iPad, with an iPhone app coming soon), an API, and a move to HTML5. Pearltrees is a French social-bookmarking and navigation startup that lets users organize and share favorite websites via a system of digital pearls. Founded in 2008 and launched in beta in December, the product has seen roughly 30% monthly growth since beta, multiplying its user base by about four- to five-fold. The company has raised roughly €3.5 million to date, including a new €1.3 million funding round. Earlier financing included €1.0M in June 2008 and €1.2M the following June, plus some public funding from the French government. About 20% of the financing has come through France's ISF wealth-tax investment scheme, and the remaining investment was from love-money, business angels and entrepreneurs; individual investor names were not disclosed. The new funding is intended to continue product development and support international growth. Pearltrees has invested early in building a U.S. presence—founder Patrice Lamothe spends at least a week each month in Silicon Valley—and version 1.0 was slated for release at the end of 2010. Pearltrees provides a visual, drag-and-drop interface for bookmarking and organizing web links into shareable “pearls” and trees. The product indexes links shared on Twitter, lets users create pearls automatically from tweets and tweet from Pearltrees, and includes search, real-time discussion and connection features. Its Social System lets users follow parts of other users’ accounts (topics or collections) rather than traditional friend links, enabling modular curation of interests. The interface surfaces relevancy and ranks content in a manner likened to PageRank, and embeds a game‑play element that fosters discovery and viral loops. Pearltrees positions itself as a human‑powered curation graph of knowledge and interests. The company is Paris‑based and has begun to monetize via advertising and premium accounts for publishers.

Total raised

$12M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Feb 2012