Outbrain graduating to A round

I am big fan from day 1 of Outbrain, this smart rating system you can see on my blog. It happens to be also one of the first investments we made in the Internet lab. Here are the two reasons that make me happy about the following announcement.

Outbrain announces today an A round of 5 million dollars with Gemini and LightSpeed. After having raised money with LGilab we decided to continue supporting Outbrain in its growth.

Outbrain has all the great components we are  looking for: a great team (Yaron Galai the CEO just sold Quigo to AOL), a great service (in that case useful both for readers and editors) and a great business model (not obvious yet, but will be rolled out over time). I enjoyed observing the development of that company nearly since the day of its creation and saw how great it is addressing a complex need simply and efficiently, being adopted at the same time by a lot of users and partners.

Outbrain has a lot of challenges ahead but has also now the firepower to take them.

Finally It is the first lab company graduating to an A round stage and this makes us particularly excited. Our goal is to finance very early stage internet companies and help them grow until the point they reach a critical milestone and require more funding. Outbrain was our first case. But we have other great things happening in the lab. Stay tuned.

More on TechCrunch, GigaOM and Centernetworks (which is also using outbrain and a good interview of Yaron Galai). Also on Techmeme, VentureBeat and TheMarker and Globes (hebrew)

Technorati tags: lgilab, outbrain, blogs, ratings, vc, israel

Comments

[Eze]

Ouriel,

If interested, there's also an interview with Yaron Galai on VC Cafe:
"There can only be a single #1 recommendation platform for blogs: Outbrain Closes $5M A-Round"

http://www.vccafe.com/2008/02/25/there-can-only-be-a-single-1-recommendation-platform-for-blogs-outbrain-closes-5m-a-round/

Thanks.