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Dueling stamps.


Two Google Inc. board members are funding a custom printing company, Zazzle Inc., that's aimed squarely at the personalized stamp franchise of Santa Monica-based Stamps.com Inc.

Palo Alto-based Zazzle, funded with $16 million from Silicon Valley venture capital firms Name Location Founding date Managing Partners/Directors Specialty Capital managed
5AM Ventures Menlo Park, CA; Waltham, MA 2002 John Diekman, PhD (managing partner), Scott Rocklage, PhD (managing partner), Andrew Schwab (managing partner) life sciences $200M [1]
 Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures, has a content library with more than 500,000 images, including Walt Disney Noun 1. Walt Disney - United States film maker who pioneered animated cartoons and created such characters as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck; founded Disneyland (1901-1966)
Disney, Walter Elias Disney
 Co. characters. They can be used for customized T-shirts, posters and, thanks to a partnership with office-mail powerhouse Pitney Bowes This article or section is written like an .
Please help [ rewrite this article] from a neutral point of view.
Mark blatant advertising for , using .
 Inc., postage stamps This is a list of postage stamps that are especially notable in some way.

The best-known stamps:
  • Treskilling Yellow (Sweden)
  • Penny Black (Britain)
  • Blue Penny (Mauritius)
  • Inverted Jenny (U.S.
.

Original Google investors John Doerr L. John Doerr (born June 29, 1951 in St. Louis, Missouri) is a successful venture capitalist at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers in Menlo Park, California, in the Silicon Valley. , a Kleiner Perkins partner, and Ram Shriram, founder of Sherpalo, will become directors at Zazzle.

Stamps.com leads the market for customized postage with its PhotoStamps product, re-launched in May.

Stamford, Conn.-based Pitney Bowes also won authorization from the U.S. Postal Service The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) processes and delivers mail to individuals and businesses within the United States. The service seeks to improve its performance through the development of efficient mail-handling systems and operates its own planning and engineering programs.  to create personalized stamps, but until now has been more focused on office-postage products.

"It's a space that we created and invented," said Stamps.com Chief Executive Ken McBride. "It's not unusual to see Pitney follow us."

As if to emphasize the new rivalry, word of Zazzle's funding came out the same day that Stamps.com announced a partnership with CafePress.com Inc., an online marketplace of shops offering customized T-shirts, mugs, bumper-stickers and postcards.

Zazzle and CafePress are competitors, with CafePress claiming 2.3 million members and Zazzle claiming nearly 1 million. "I'm not sure if they're No. 2 or No. 3, but it's an industry where No. 1 has a lot of advantages, so we think CafePress is the right partner," McBride said.

Staff reporter Hilary Potkewitz can be reached by phone at (323) 549-5225, ext. 226, or by e-mail at hpotkewitz@labusinessjournal.com
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Title Annotation:Zazzle Inc. to be funded by Two Google Inc.
Author:Potkewitz, Hilary
Publication:Los Angeles Business Journal
Article Type:Brief Article
Geographic Code:1USA
Date:Jul 25, 2005
Words:278
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