San Mateo, Calif. — Worknik, a start-up which develops online tools for locating and understanding words, has raised an additional $8 million in a third round with Google’s Bradley Horowitz joining their board. This is the first board appointment for Horowitz, who is vice president of product management at Google.
The Series C funding round was led by Lucas Venture Group with participation from Floodgate, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Roger McNamee and others, it was announced Monday.
“Bradley is somebody who has been steeped in next generation tech and has access to consumers,” Joe Hyrkin, chief executive of Wordnik told VentureBeat. “A lot it is having him dig under the hood of our technology and help us map out how to turn these things mainstream.”
Founded in 2009, the San Mateo-based company uses linguistic data from the internet to help people understand words by providing alternative to traditional dictionary definitions. Utilizing social media sites like Twitter, Wordnik’s definition page offers multiple definitions by using examples, tweets, comments and related words.
“I’ve devoted my career to finding and working on innovative technologies,” said Horowitz. “In accepting my first Board appointment, I now have the opportunity to help guide Wordnik, a company that started with an incredibly innovative word navigation system, as it continues to offer deeper access to discovery and meaning across digital text. I know it will be a very rewarding experience.”
Since their launch the company has raised a total of $12.8 million.
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