Rapleaf

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Rapleaf
Type Private start-up
Founded May, 2006
Headquarters San Francisco, California, USA
Key people Auren Hoffman, Manish Shah
Industry Social networking services
Products Rapleaf, Upscoop
Revenue none
Employees 13 (as of August 14, 2007)
Website www.rapleaf.com

Rapleaf is a Web 2.0 start-up company based in San Francisco, California founded by Auren Hoffman and Manish Shah.

Contents

[edit] Investors

Rapleaf was initially self-funded by Hoffman and Shah[1]. Peter Thiel of The Founders Fund led a seed round of $1.0 million[2]. Other angel investors in the round include Eric Di Benedetto, Aydin Senkut, Jeff Clavier, and Ron Conway, all with a background of venture capital-backed technology companies.[2]

[edit] History, products and services

Hoffman and Shah met at UC Berkeley's Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology[3] in spring of 2004. The two worked on a project prior to Rapleaf from February 2005 to November 2005. They formed Rapleaf in April, 2006 though work began in November 2005.

The company's first product, Rapleaf, is a meta-reputation system that allows users to create reviews and ratings of consumer transactions, which they then contribute to multiple e commerce websites. On May 15, 2006 eBay removed a number of auction listings where the seller had included links to Rapleaf, claiming they were in violation of its terms of use. Business commentators have had mixed opinions about this move.[4].

On January 26, 2007, Rapleaf released "Upscoop," a service that allows users to search for and manage their contacts by email address across multiple social networking sites.[5]. In late August 2007, Upscoop began e-mailing entire contact lists that are provided by their users when they login.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Marshall, Matt (April 24, 2006). Networker Hoffman launches Rapleaf -- to track your reputation beyond eBay. The Mercury News. Retrieved on 2007-01-26.
  2. ^ a b Marshall, Matt (June 11, 2006). Rapleaf, the e-commerce reputation manager, raises ~$1M to take on eBay. The Mercury News. Retrieved on 2007-01-26.
  3. ^ .CET (June 9, 2006). RapLeaf Funding. Berkeley Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology News. Retrieved on 2007-01-26.
  4. ^ Arrington, Michael (May 17, 2006). eBay Bans Rapleaf Links. Techcrunch. Retrieved on 2007-01-26.
  5. ^ Gonzales, Nick (January 26, 2007). Stalk Your Contact List with UpScoop. Techcrunch. Retrieved on 2007-01-26.

[edit] External links


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