blog“Surfing the Internet”
In a world with hundreds of millions of websites, we use search engines to generate lists of blue links, multiple browser tabs to display nuggets of information, and other tools to piece the information together.
It gets worse on mobile, where we struggle between broken mobile web experiences and hard-to-discover single purpose apps.
Whatever happened to the promise of “surfing the Internet?” Rather than a connected experience, we’re hopping from site to site or app to app, each service unaware of others.
What if we could break down these silos and deliver a more fluid experience around web and mobile search, browsing, and social interactions?
Moreover, how can we create a more intelligent and contextually aware experience for getting things done in one place?
Vurb was founded with the mission of evolving how we find, navigate, and interact with the wealth of data and services on the Internet. When we bring services, actions, and people together, we can explore new opportunities around this interconnected graph.
Last year, we raised over $2M from thought-leaders like Max Levchin, Drew Houston, Naval Ravikant, and funds including Atlas Venture, Caffeinated Capital, Crunchfund, Data Collective, and Susa Ventures.
A few months ago, we announced our vision at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC and were honored to bring back the Disrupt Cup in a competition that has launched companies like Mint, Yammer, Dropbox, and Pied Piper. Post-Disrupt, we’ve been blown away by the level of interest, support, and encouragement for our mission.
Our partnership with Redpoint
To accelerate our development, we’re excited to announce our $8M Series A funding led by Redpoint Ventures, with participation from Stanford University alongside many of our seed investors.
Geoff Yang, founding partner at Redpoint, will be joining me on our Board of Directors. Redpoint has lots of relevant experience in our space, and I couldn’t be more excited to work with a partnership that shares our vision.
The adventure continues
Since Disrupt, we’ve been working non-stop to realize this vision of connected services. We can’t make this happen without support from the community – our users, developers, and service partners. Let’s work together to redefine “surfing the Internet.”
Our search, browsing, and sharing experience is currently in beta for services and apps around places, movies, and media. Thank you to all of our beta users and their feedback as we develop this experience. For those of you still on our waiting list – we’re moving as fast as we can and thank you for your enthusiasm!
Look out for more exciting announcements, but in the meantime, we are looking to expand our team in San Francisco. If you’re passionate about changing the way we use the Internet and building product that you will use every day, come join us.
-Bobby
TL; DR: Got funding, building product, we’re hiring, more invites soon 🙂
