GarageBand.com Secures $2.5 Million Investment Led by Khosla Ventures, Develops `iLike' Service.SAN FRANCISCO San Francisco (săn frănsĭs`kō), city (1990 pop. 723,959), coextensive with San Francisco co., W Calif., on the tip of a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, which are connected by the strait known as the Golden , Calif. -- GarageBand.com, the leading independent music community, announced today it has secured its first round of institutional investment, a $2.5 million dollar equity financing Equity Financing The act of raising money for company activities by selling common or preferred stock to individual or institutional investors. In return for the money paid, shareholders receive ownership interests in the corporation. from an all-star roster of strategic investors including Vinod Khosla Vinod Khosla (born January 28, 1955 in Pune, India[1]) is an Indian-American venture capitalist. He is an influential personality in Silicon Valley. He was one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems and became a general partner of the venture capital firm Kleiner, and Bob Pittman. The company is preparing to launch "iLike," a new social music discovery service targeted at the iPod and MySpace generation, and is currently soliciting trial users at www.iLike.com. Khosla Ventures and partner David Weiden led the round, with additional new investors including: Bob Pittman, co-founder of MTV MTV in full Music Television U.S. cable television network, established in 1980 to present videos of musicians and singers performing new rock music. MTV won a wide following among rock-music fans worldwide and greatly affected the popular-music business. and former head of AOL (A division of Time Warner, Inc., New York, NY, www.aol.com) The world's largest online information service with access to the Internet, e-mail, chat rooms and a variety of databases and services. ; Herbert Allen III of Allen & Company; and other individuals from the music, internet, and media industries. Vinod Khosla and Bob Pittman will join the company's Advisory Board alongside such luminaries as Talking Head Jerry Harrison Jerry Harrison (born Jeremiah Griffin Harrison, 21 February 1949, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) was the keyboardist and guitarist for the influential New Wave group, Talking Heads. He was also an original member of The Modern Lovers. , legendary producer Sir George Martin Sir George Henry Martin CBE (born 3 January 1926 in Highbury, London, England) is sometimes referred to as "the Fifth Beatle"—a title that he owes to his work as producer of almost all of The Beatles' records. ,and David Goldberg, head of Yahoo! Music Yahoo! Music, provided by the Yahoo! network, is a provider of a variety of music services, including Internet radio, music videos, news, artist information, and original programming. . "We love to back great entrepreneurs," said Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, "and we believe this is a great team to redefine how consumers discover music." Mr. Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems and former general partner at Kleiner Perkins, has previously backed such successes as Juniper Networks, Nexgen, Cerent, Excite, Netscape, AOL, Amazon, and Google. "We couldn't have dreamt of a better roster of investors," said Ali Partovi, CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. of GarageBand.com. "Vinod Khosla and Bob Pittman are inspirational figures in our industry. Our new investors bring terrific experience to the table and I look forward to working with and learning from each of them." The new iLike service will expand the company's existing services by including mainstream artists, incorporating links among friends, and offering tools targeted at the iPod and MySpace generation. These new services, to be offered at www.iLike.com, will include a companion app for iTunes that allows consumers to organize their digital music libraries and discover new artists based on their listening habits. iLike will help consumers discover music based on what they and their friends like. About iLike and GarageBand.com. Since 1999, GarageBand.com has allowed ordinary listeners to pick the best emerging music, resulting in commercial success for deserving artists worldwide. Top-rated songs from the site are promoted by almost 1,000 radio partners including Clear Channel's "NEW! Discover Music" program. Dozens of artists have been signed after climbing the GarageBand charts, including double-platinum Drowning Pool and recent Billboard chart-topper 10 Years. The company also operates Gcast, a service that lets anybody create and share their own podcast for free. The company's vision is to redefine how music is discovered: by the people, for the people. About Khosla Ventures. Khosla Ventures offers venture assistance, strategic advice and capital to entrepreneurs. The firm helps entrepreneurs extend the potential of the Internet to new markets such as mobile and supports breakthrough scientific work such as bio refineries. The partners have been involved in founding or growing billion dollar businesses such as Sun Microsystems, Juniper Networks and AOL and pioneering scientific work such as the first complete sequencing of a plant genome. Vinod Khosla founded the firm in 2004 and was joined by general partners David Weiden and Samir Kaul, as well as chief scientific officer Doug Cameron in 2006. The firm's capital comes entirely from its own partners and a portion of all profits are donated to charitable causes, with an emphasis on micro-finance and affordable housing. Khosla Ventures is based in Menlo Park, California Menlo Park is a city in San Mateo County, California in the United States of America. It is located at latitude 37°29' North, longitude 122°9' East. Menlo Park had 30,785 inhabitants as of the 2000 U.S. Census. . |
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