Snapchat Raises $13.5M Series A Led By Benchmark, Now Sees 60M Snaps Sent Per Day
Snapchat, the impermanent messaging app that won “Fastest Rising Startup” at the 2012 Crunchies, has finalized a $13.5 million Series A round led by Benchmark’s Mitch Lasky.
According to The New York Times, Snapchat is now valued between $60 and $70 million. In December, GigaOm’s Om Malik reported that Snapchat was raising an $8 million round from Benchmark at roughly a $50 million valuation; and our own Eric Eldon wrote that Snapchat was raising a Series A “north of $10 million” at a rough $70 million valuation, led by Lasky.
Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel confirmed the funding to me, and noted that the company now sees 60 million snaps sent per day, and users have sent over 5 billion snaps in total. The company has hired five new employees, bringing the total staff to 10, and has moved to a new office in Venice Beach, CA.
Spiegel tells me the company will use the funding for “hiring and servers, definitely. But most importantly, it allows us to remain independent and continue to grow the Snapchat community.”
The Times also reported that Mark Zuckerberg met with the Snapchat team in December, shortly before Facebook launched carbon copy competitor Poke.
Snapchat previously raised $485,000 from Lightspeed Venture Partners.
“I started hearing Snapchat in the same context as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook,” Lasky said to The Times, echoing Barry Eggers’ sentiments when he led Lightspeed’s investment. “That got me curious.”
Update: Lasky has posted about Snapchat on his personal blog, explaining that he will be joining the company’s board of directors along with Spiegel and co-founder Bobby Murphy.
“At Benchmark we search for entrepreneurs who want to change the world, and Evan and Bobby certainly have that ambition. We believe that Snapchat can become one of the most important mobile companies in the world, and Snapchat’s initial momentum — 60 million shared “snaps” per day, over 5 billion sent through the service to date — supports that belief. Snapchat’s ramp reminded us of another mobile app Benchmark had the good fortune to back at an early stage: Instagram.”
Lasky also noted that he spent most of his career in LA, where Snapchat’s offices are.
Original post: Snapchat Raises $13.5M Series A Led By Benchmark, Now Sees 60M Snaps Sent Per Day
Kickstarter: This Rubber Band Shotgun Is The Mother Of All Rubber Band Shotguns
Imagine it’s Thanksgiving morning and you’re with the family. You creep down the stairs, Sheriff in hand, and sneak in on dear old dad as he makes bacon pancakes. You set your weapon on “shotgun” and pull the trigger. A volley of hot rubber whangs him in the legs, his old frame buckling as he takes the shot. Another kill. All this can be yours with the Bandit, an automatic rubber band gun built for speed and (mild) pain infliction. The project, created by Bob Coulston, is a DIY, easy-to-assemble rubber band gun that can fire single bands, multiple bands in rapid succession, or all the bands at once, creating a hellstorm of flying bands.
The Outlaw model supports only single shots at a time while the Sheriff can be put into shotgun mode. The kit comes with all the laser-cut parts you need to assemble the gun and it’s held together with a few bolts.
Coulston describes the genesis of the gun thusly:
The idea of Bandit Guns was created when my three children Kelsey, Macy, and Bobby (now 14, 11, and 9 years old) came down in the wood shop while I was building a set of cabinets for a client. Excited, they asked me if I could help them make a rubber band gun. Remembering all the fun I had with my rubber band gun that my father made for me, I cut out three blocks of wood that somewhat looked like a gun and nailed a clothespin to the top with a notch on the front of the barrel for the rubber band to hook into. I showed them how to load it and fire at a piece of wood sitting at the end of the workbench. Bobby said,”Single shot, Dad? Boring, I want to make my own rubber band gun!” He knows he can’t use the power tools so that got me to thinking about how I could create a kit that he could assemble and would make him feel as if he made it himself but, still cool enough that his friends would want one too. That was the beginning, after the first model having over 50 parts and not even working. Approximately 100 versions later the Bandit Gun was created with what you see today. Being a kid at heart, I probably use the Bandit Gun more than they do.
He is way over his goal of $5,000 and there are only 16 more days to pledge. I’d personally recommend buying the $300 package that gets you 10 Sheriff guns so you and your extended family can spend the next year giving each other (mild) welts as you go about your daily business.
See the original post: Kickstarter: This Rubber Band Shotgun Is The Mother Of All Rubber Band Shotguns