AboutUs, the wiki that’s working to capture detailed information about every site on the Web, has secured $5 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Voyager Capital with a $2.5 million investment.
How does a small startup secure capital in such turbulent economic times? Being profitable helps – something AboutUs achieved by mid-year 2008. The company is forecasting continued growth this year. CEO Ray King says the company is targeting $5 million in revenue for 2009. The primary source remains advertising, but the online marketing services AboutUs sells – including content creation and custom page development – continue to gain traction.
Another reason for investor confidence? The staff. AboutUs holds a special place in the world of wiki as the employer of Ward Cunningham, the inventor of the wiki, and they continue to attract new talent. They recently hired a number of new employees, including CFO Jack Williamson. King hopes to use the new funding to increase the size of the company to around 50 employees by the end of 2009, up from its current staff of 32.
AboutUs dynamically creates pages from publicly accessible information on Web sites, like meta tags and whois information. Once built, the pages – like any wiki – are available to be edited by the company, users, or anyone who visits the site. AboutUs also offers monitoring services to facilitate “reputation management” – knowing who is saying what about you where. When a monitored page is edited, users are alerted to both the change and the user who made the edit. And given that it’s a wiki page, they can choose how best to deal with the edit.
For more information on the company and its offerings, visit the AboutUs page on AboutUs.org.
