Participated · Equity · Sep 2011

Blekko is a search engine that launched last year and differentiates itself with Slashtags—query refinement tools (e.g., /news, /date, /amazon, /blogs) that let human editors filter results. The product emphasizes aggressive spam removal, having banned pages from known content farms and blocked pages from approximately 1.1 million domains. Blekko indexes roughly 3.5 billion URLs and integrates social data and Facebook comments into results, with plans under consideration to integrate Twitter data. The company has signed partnerships with Topix, DuckDuckGo and Foodily. Financially, Blekko has raised a total of $55 million to date. Yandex’s involvement is positioned to help the company grow its product and talent access. Blekko is a search engine that kept a placeholder name it created while operating in stealth. The team has avoided heavy publicity and hasn’t turned on a large hype machine. The company was described as quietly doing its thing and growing nicely despite earlier search startup failures such as Cuil. Ashton Kutcher invested in the company, bringing some Hollywood attention. Financially, Blekko has raised around $25 million in a mix of debt and equity capital to date. The article does not detail product roadmaps or specific operating metrics. Blekko is developing a stealth search engine and has remained in private launch mode while refining its product. The company recently closed a $2.5 million inside round led by existing investors USVP and CMEA Ventures. That financing brings Blekko's total capital raised to $20 million. CEO Rich Skrenta said the team is taking its time to launch the product. In the meantime, the company is hiring aggressively. No revenue, user, founding year, or location details are provided in the article. Blekko is a stealth search engine that has been covered since early 2008. The company raised a third round of financing, $11.5 million, from USVP and CMEA. That brings total capital raised to $17.5 million, including a $1 million credit line. Their last round was in March 2008. Blekko has asked for no press while it continues to bake the product. TechCrunch reported there appears to be "something interesting under the hood" and noted the search space is difficult but financially large for a successful entrant. Blekko is a stealth search company founded by Topix co-founder Rich Skrenta. Little is publicly known about its product; its website currently shows only a puppet photo. The company appears to aim at competing with or finding niches outside of Google in search. Blekko has attracted investor interest, raising $3 million in a second round at a $23 million post-money valuation. Prior to this it raised a $2 million seed round. Investors in the latest round include Marc Andreessen, SoftTech VC and Western Technology Investment.