Our Investment in about.me

We are pleased to announce that we’ve co-led the $11m Series B funding of about.me. Based in San Francisco, about.me is a platform for representing personal identity online allowing users to create and maintain a curated page for self-expression. For examples, take a look at Brad Feld, Seth Levine, Ryan McIntyre, and Jason Mendelson.

We have long been obsessed with the notion of online identity and self-expression. One of our early Foundry Group investments, Gist tackled part of this problem, but was acquired relatively earlier in its life by RIM. More recently, our investment in FullContact addresses the idea of a definitive contact record for everyone on the planet, generated automatically from publicly available data.

about.me solves the opposite side of this problem – it allows everyone on the planet to create and maintain a definitive contact record for themselves. But this isn’t a boring contact record, nor is it a canned, dull, uninspired list of things you’ve done and places you’ve worked. It’s a beautiful, user crafted articulation of one’s online identity, that anyone can easily create.

And that’s only the beginning. about.me combines identity with search, discovery, and communication. Interested in learning more about some of your favorite venture capitalists or people living in Boulder, CO? After you’ve found them, you can communicate with them while clearly articulating your own identity, in a way in which each of you are in control of.

We’ve known Tony Conrad, the co-founder of about.me for many years. We’ve invested with him, and his partners at True Ventures, in many companies. We think about.me is special and decided to go all in with Tony and True to go after what we think is an opportunity to finally create the definitive source for identity and self-expression online.