Twitter VC Funding Done, Raises $15M

Om Malik, Wednesday, May 21, 2008 at 10:39 PM PT Comments (88)

I spent most of the day digging up more information on Twitter and its new round of funding that I reported last night. The update is that Twitter reached an agreement with investors today to raise $15 million in funding at around $80 million pre-money valuation. A new investor is leading the round with existing investor Union Square Ventures also participating. With this round, the company will have raised a little over $20 million in VC backing thus far.

Official news of the deal is eventually going to percolate out, and hopefully I will be able to nail down the specifics on who is the lead investor. Valleywag and Silicon Alley Insider had mentioned Spark Capital as a potential investor. Meanwhile, I am told that Charles River Ventures, after fighting a bit, is now out of the race. The news of new funding comes at a time when Twitter is dealing with a whole slew of scaling and infrastructure issues. Today, the folks there almost threw their proverbial hands up in despair.

Update: Twitter the great facilitator of e-narcissism also can’t keep secrets. As Michael Arrington points out, two tweets from two parties add fuel to the rumors of Spark being the mystery investor in the San Francisco company.

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76 trackbacks so far

May 21st, 2008
10:53 PM PT

[...] Today was a very bad day for Twitter. Yes, it was down on and off throughout the afternoon, but that is really a given at this point. The bigger news was its admission that it had no idea what the problem was that was causing its downtime. The service has reason to smile tonight through as its closed its second round of funding, according to GigaOM. [...]

May 21st, 2008
11:31 PM PT

[...] twitter raides $15M [...]

May 21st, 2008
11:32 PM PT

[...] has some slightly vague, but still convincing news confirming the recent rumor of Twitter’s new VC funding round. Details aren’t all fleshed out yet, but it seems that the existing investor, Union Square [...]

May 22nd, 2008
12:29 AM PT

[...] has closed their third round of financing, says Om Malik. He pegs it at a $15 million raise at around an $80 million valuation, but doesn’t know the [...]

May 22nd, 2008
12:34 AM PT

[...] 2: With all of my talk, Twitter just closed a $15MM round of funding at a reported $70MM valuation Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Chat Rooms Could [...]

May 22nd, 2008
12:36 AM PT

[...] has some slightly vague, but still convincing news confirming the recent rumor of Twitter’s new VC funding round. Details aren’t all fleshed out yet, but it seems that the existing investor, Union Square [...]

May 22nd, 2008
12:47 AM PT

[...] I saw Om Malik tweet that Twitter made their Series B funding round ($15 million), my reaction was fairly simple: ok, they’ve got money. But do they have a plan [...]

May 22nd, 2008
1:10 AM PT

[...] itself is dead. With a third round of funding complete and no business model they’ve placed themselves into a position of debt (without the ability [...]

May 22nd, 2008
1:37 AM PT

[...] Twitter has closed a $15 million round on a $80 million valuation according to GigaOm. [...]

May 22nd, 2008
1:41 AM PT

[...] Malik made an unofficial claim that Twitter closed a $15 million Series-B round of financing yesterday. Michael Arrington thinks the rumor is true and believes the lead [...]

May 22nd, 2008
6:43 AM PT

[...] service Twitter has reportedly closed a $15 million Series B funding round, according to Om Malik of GigaOM. Malik estimates it will bring the company’s valuation to about $80 million, and that the [...]

May 22nd, 2008
6:46 AM PT

[...] reports that Twitter has completed a new round of venture capital funding. “The update is that [...]

May 22nd, 2008
6:49 AM PT

[...] has received $15 million in venture funding, according to Om Malik. Now the fun really begins: Twitter needs to change its architecture on the [...]

May 22nd, 2008
6:49 AM PT

[...] OM Malik sigue buscando saber quien es el lead investor en la nueva ronda de Twitter por un total de u$s15 millones y que le da una valuación pre-money de u$s80 millones. [...]

May 22nd, 2008
6:57 AM PT
May 22nd, 2008
7:11 AM PT

[...] Om Malik floats the Rumor that Twitter has finally closed their latest round of funding, placing the… Meanwhile, The Inquisitr floats another rumor that Twitter wanted a $200 million valuation. [...]

May 22nd, 2008
7:19 AM PT

[...] to an article from GigaOM, it appears that both Union Square Ventures, and Spark Capital are both involved in the deal.   [...]

May 22nd, 2008
7:20 AM PT

[...] Om Malik (Twitter VC Funding Done. Raises $15 MM) hat Twitter jetzt eine erneute Finanzierungsrunde abgeschlossen und $15 mio eingesackt, insgesamt [...]

May 22nd, 2008
7:24 AM PT

[...] million Twitter Twitter scores another $15 million, and it’s worth around $80 million.So let me get this straight… A Web app with no business model that basically blogs short entries [...]

May 22nd, 2008
7:34 AM PT

[...] Malik is reporting that Twitter has finally closed a $15 million round pegging its pre-money valuation at $80 million. [...]

May 22nd, 2008
7:47 AM PT

[...] GigaOM: Twitter VC Funding Done. Raises $15 MM [...]

May 22nd, 2008
7:49 AM PT

[...] self-described “interesting Web thing that matters to the world,“ you are apparently out seeking millions more in venture capital funding so that perhaps you WILL be able to succeed in “long-term architecture work to make Twitter a [...]

May 22nd, 2008
8:11 AM PT

[...] Sources: [1] GigaOM: Twitter VC Funding Done. Raises $15 MM by Om Malik [2] TechCrunch: Highly Likely Rumor: [...]

May 22nd, 2008
8:17 AM PT

[...] to suffer outages, users will leave the service. What Twitter needs to do now is take that $15 million in new funding and focus it all on making the service stable. Only when it’s working flawlessly can the [...]

May 22nd, 2008
8:23 AM PT

[...] und Serverprobleme müssen nämlich dringend gelöst werden. Alles weitere zum Twitter-Deal bei Gigaom und Valleywag. Ein Problem bleibt aber - das fehlende Geschäftsmodell: The company still [...]

May 22nd, 2008
8:27 AM PT

[...] It’s bad. really-really bad.  But hey, at least they are honest.   And the $15 million they’ve just picked up should be enough to hire someone who actually knows how to get out of this [...]

May 22nd, 2008
8:44 AM PT

[...] hinzuweisen und Gutscheine über seinen Twitterfeed verteilt. Auch die Tatsache das Twitter weitere 15 Mill. $ an Venture Capital eingesackt hat zeigen, dass Twitter von seiner zukunftsträchtigen Vision gut leben [...]

May 22nd, 2008
8:46 AM PT

[...] raises another $15 million. Om Malik over at GigaOm reports that Twitter has raised a new round of funding, bringing the total valuation to $80 [...]

May 22nd, 2008
9:31 AM PT

[...] versus twitter love. It’s likely they will get these issues resolved, especially with the rumors going around this week of their additional round of funding. If done well, this could be a great [...]

May 22nd, 2008
11:08 AM PT

[...] GigaOM berichtet, konnte Twitter seine Investoren zu einer neuen Finanzierungsrunde bewegen, die 15 Millionen Dollar [...]

May 22nd, 2008
11:58 AM PT

[...] the round with existing investor Union Square Ventures also participating. (Iwantmedia 5/22, (link) [...]

May 22nd, 2008
1:19 PM PT

[...] nonsense. Twitter raised $15 million last year which should be more than enough to defend itself. Assuming of course it hasn’t [...]

May 22nd, 2008
2:39 PM PT

[...] recibe 15 millones de euros de inverisón, lo que le pone en 20 millones de dólares los que ha recibido [...]

May 22nd, 2008
7:53 PM PT

[...] it doesn’t seem to matter much. This week, Twitter raised a cool $15 million (according to a report in GigaOm). The valuation? $80 [...]

May 22nd, 2008
8:42 PM PT

[...] it doesn’t seem to matter much. This week, Twitter raised a cool $15 million (according to a report in GigaOm). The valuation? $80 [...]

May 22nd, 2008
8:57 PM PT

[...] things Twitter, this has been one of the most anticipated and hotly discussed fundings in a while: Om reports that after much jostling, the micro-blogging/messaging company has nailed down a $15 [...]

May 23rd, 2008
12:06 AM PT

[...] Weitere Infos hierzu gibt es bei gigaom.com [...]

May 23rd, 2008
3:59 AM PT

[...] gestern bekannt wurde, hat Twitter eine weitere Finanzierungsrunde hinter sich gebracht und 15 Millionen Dollar an frischem Kapital eingesammelt. Dass der [...]

May 23rd, 2008
8:01 AM PT

[...] has some slightly vague, but still convincing news confirming the recent rumor of Twitter’s new VC funding round. Details aren’t all fleshed out yet, but it seems that the existing investor, Union Square [...]

May 23rd, 2008
11:43 PM PT

[...] one bright spot: Twitter apparently scored a new $15 million round of VC [...]

May 24th, 2008
12:01 PM PT
May 25th, 2008
2:35 AM PT

[...] Twitter Series B Funding: Done. Raises $15 MM - I spent most of the day digging up more information on Twitter and its Series B round of funding that I reported last night. The update is that Twitter reached an agreement with investors today to raise $15 million in funding at around … [...]

May 25th, 2008
3:25 PM PT

[...] to suffer outages, users will leave the service. What Twitter needs to do now is take that $15 million in new funding and focus it all on making the service stable. Only when it’s working flawlessly can the [...]

May 25th, 2008
5:38 PM PT

[...] site Twitter has managed to secure US $15 million dollars in VC funding as reported by tech blog GigaOm, leaving them with a valuation of US $80 million dollars. This comes at an interesting time for the [...]

May 25th, 2008
9:22 PM PT

[...] behind the service may not have a business model, but it surely has the buzz. Whether it is their new round of funding or their inability to keep the service running - the blog world loves to twitter about [...]

May 26th, 2008
7:53 AM PT

[...] is good news for Twitter, however. According to Om Malik’s GigaOM blog, the startup has just received another $15 million in VC money. Unfortunately it’s only [...]

May 26th, 2008
1:05 PM PT

[...] thought of a way Twitter can solve all of their scaling issues, as well as put a chunk of that $15 million in funding to good use. A competition, similar to Netflix’ [...]

May 26th, 2008
6:36 PM PT

[...] behind the service may not have a business model, but it surely has the buzz. Whether it is their new round of funding or their inability to keep the service running — the blog world loves to twitter about [...]

May 27th, 2008
6:28 AM PT

[...] muestran su descontento pero a su vez el apoyo. La gente se pregunta cada vez más, a donde van las millonadas inversiones que ellos [...]

May 27th, 2008
7:01 AM PT

[...] fact that Om Malik broke the news that they closed their Series B round of $15 million, I’m not impressed. [...]

May 27th, 2008
10:48 PM PT

[...] has been a rough stretch for Twitter. Despite another influx of funding, continued downtime and issues with terms of service policies served as a final straw from some [...]

May 28th, 2008
8:37 AM PT

[...] It’s the darling of the blogosphere. It’s the subject of debate. And to its investors, it’s now worth $80 million. [...]

May 28th, 2008
3:29 PM PT

[...] be able to turn things around, but I sure hope they do. I really love Twitter. Maybe the $15 million in additional funding that they recently secured will help. addthis_pub = ‘mastermaq’;addthis_logo = [...]

May 28th, 2008
9:49 PM PT

[...] other news, there is still no final word on the rumored to be finalized Twitter funding (which GigaOM first reported), but a little birdie tells us we’ll hear something soon. Tags: co:Twitter [...]

May 29th, 2008
12:23 AM PT

[...] Recent suggestions that they just scored $15 Million in additional VC funding got me thinking - are these Venture Capitalists crazy or is there something in this thing called Twitter? [...]

May 29th, 2008
3:03 AM PT

[...] there is no other word from Twitter finalising their funding. Although there has been rumours but there is no final word from them. [...]

May 29th, 2008
6:48 AM PT

[...] has experienced some considerable technical growing pains. Though it seems they’ve just raised $20 in round B funding, which should go some way to solving these problems before it makes a serious impact on user [...]

May 30th, 2008
12:05 AM PT

[...] para mas down que up un grupo de usuarios les invitan Pizza sin olvidar que han recibido una jugosa inyección de dinero. A pesar de todo, sus adictos usuarios aún seguimos usando este servicio. (A pesar que aún no es [...]

May 30th, 2008
12:49 PM PT

[...] Twitter a terminé un tour de table qui a levé 15 millions de dollars, ce qui amène sa valeur à 80 millions de dollars, a affirmé GigaOm. [...]

June 4th, 2008
3:15 PM PT

[...] Recent suggestions that they just scored Million in additional VC funding got me thinking - are these Venture Capitalists crazy or is there something in this thing called Twitter? [...]

June 9th, 2008
4:10 PM PT

[...] Twitter VC Funding Done, Raises $15M [...]

June 20th, 2008
8:32 PM PT

[...] Om has the scoop on Twitter’s latest funding round.  It was no coincidence that I just started my Twitter experiment, as the company closed on a $15MM round yesterday that Om is reporting was raised at an $80MM pre-money valuation.  The company had reportedly raised $5MM previously.  The round is being shared by new and previous investors including Union Square Ventures. I hope the new capital means less of this: [...]

June 22nd, 2008
12:53 PM PT

[...] user base (compared to both Digg and Facebook) is small, Twitter has benefitted (as indicated by healthy funding) from a tornado of conversation around their service. It appears that users of Twitter are much [...]

June 24th, 2008
12:58 PM PT

[...] Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital and Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) have announced that they have joined Twitter’s Board. It was not revealed before today that Jeff Bezos was an investor in Twitter’s rumored $15 million third round of funding [GigaOm]. [...]

June 24th, 2008
1:05 PM PT

[...] (as well as CEO of Amazon). How much have they raised exactly? They haven’t said but Om Malik previously speculated that the amount was $15 [...]

June 24th, 2008
1:15 PM PT

[...] Malik unearthed the rumor of this round of funding last month and noted that Spark Capital was believed to be the lead [...]

June 24th, 2008
1:44 PM PT

[...] The amount of the investment was not disclosed but since the rumors of a new funding round began several weeks ago, it’s been reported that Twitter’s series B raised $15 million. [...]

June 25th, 2008
3:08 PM PT

[...] Malik unearthed the rumor of this round of funding last month and noted that Spark Capital was believed to be the lead [...]

June 25th, 2008
11:51 PM PT

[...] hat Twitter eine zweite Finanzierungsrunde über 15 Millionen US Dollar erhalten, und das in einer Zeit, in der der Service immer wieder [...]

July 3rd, 2008
5:37 PM PT

[...] at Scooters add to anyone’s day? Then one day I made “time” for Twitter! And it looks like Amazon has made an 15 million dollars worth of time for Twitter. With this said, what does Twitter offer? Why would Amazon invest in a micro blogging service? [...]

July 5th, 2008
10:13 AM PT

[...] pur breve storia. Ha da poco ricevuto un cospicuo finanziamento a tritolo di capitale di rischio (link) e contemporaneamente fronteggia la spinta di alcuni dei suoi principali e più influenti utenti ad [...]

July 7th, 2008
3:32 AM PT

[...] countless startups are still getting funded by investors without financial business models that are sound, proven, or even make sense. Even a couple of my colleagues have questionable [...]

July 15th, 2008
10:31 AM PT

[...] did indeed acquire Summize today, but at first I was a little confused. Twitter just received $15 million and needs to ramp up quickly. There’s a team of 6 guys at Summize that just finished a 20 [...]

July 15th, 2008
11:05 PM PT

[...] Firmen bereits im Juni getroffen hatten, wurde ein Deal dieser Art erwartet, besonders nachdem bekannt wurde, dass Twitter selbst eine Finanzspritze in Höhe von 15 Millionen Dollar erhalten [...]

July 24th, 2008
11:22 AM PT

[...] What else, besides $20 million dollars, do you need to recruit quality programmers to a startup in SF? Topical Tags:public [...]

August 12th, 2008
4:27 AM PT

[...] that you’ll only keep your shares if the company gets support from the venture community. They get $15 million. You buy more [...]

12 comments so far

May 22nd, 2008
12:21 AM PT
harsh shah said:

$80 MM pre-money - wow! Congrats to the team.

May 22nd, 2008
1:24 AM PT
Steve said:

So what is Twitter’s plan to make money? Investors can’t just be throwing money into a hole? Can they? Waiting for a buyer?

May 22nd, 2008
5:40 AM PT

I would sell my home and cash my pension & 401k & savings and put it all towards an investment in Twitter valued at 80million. I think they are more valuable than Facebook. Perhaps not intrinsically but there is a lot of potential to be THE evolved form of communication in 5 years.

May 22nd, 2008
5:50 AM PT
jimconnolly said:

Great post OM (as always),

I use and recommend Twitter, it’s superb! I just hope that this investment is a good fit and that they continue to develop the product.

I am also really looking forward to seeing how Twitter plan to monetize all those eyeballs.

Thanks again Om!

Jim Connolly
(link)

May 22nd, 2008
8:20 AM PT
Jasper said:

CRV is an existing investor in Twitter. (link)

May 22nd, 2008
8:47 AM PT
Joe S said:

So they now value Twitter at $95MM (post money), meaning that to create an exit for the latest investors would mean that they have to build a Billion dollar company around the ability to send short messages?

I could be very wrong but this looks more like a neat trick and a good story vs. a real company.

May 22nd, 2008
10:24 AM PT
Thomas said:

Om,
The downtime probably cost them $120MM in valuation. No downtime and they would be the hottest communication platform start-up going right now and would easily have been able to grab a $200MM valuation. The W2.0 crowd penchant for cheap and fast is starting to show its roots.

May 22nd, 2008
11:10 AM PT
rabble said:

So ironic! Charles River Ventures DID own twitter at one point, back when it was a project of Odeo. They didn’t want anything to do with it, thought was worthless, and let Evan Williams buy them out for about what they put in. A classic example of VC Fail.

May 22nd, 2008
11:16 AM PT

Can someone, anyone, explain their business model to me? It looks like there isn’t one, yet they managed to pull $15 mil in financing?

May 23rd, 2008
10:47 AM PT
Kevin said:

When Twitter is down, try Zannel

May 24th, 2008
1:12 AM PT
Carsten Reinke said:

This is ridiculous.

What do we have:
- No working system, to be more specific: A proven unability to actually deliver a working system.
- No business model.
- No revenue whatsoever.
- Huge costs for sending short messages (which will probably be that high that paying for them with ads won’t work)
- A couple dozen clones.

Sorry, I don’t get it.

June 11th, 2008
5:32 AM PT
ValGeenie said:

inflation, recession, yet the .com nonsense 2.0 days continue. Amazing. Hopefully, for the sake of the LP’s in the VC funds which invested in Twitter, Twitter will manage to pull a Mark Cuban-like sale to a stupid acquierer…hey, like maybe Yahoo!

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