Airtime, the startup many have heard of but few know what it does, closed a reported $25 million third round of financing led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Accel Partners, Google Ventures, and Social + Capital. Bing Gordon from KPCB will join Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning on the Airtime board.
Other Airtime investors include Founders Fund, SV Angel, Yuri Milner, Ashton Kutcher, will.i.am, Scott Braun and TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington.
Having people of this caliber and digital media cred involved is why there has been interest in Airtime since its earliest days, when it had the working name of Supyo. The company describes itself as a live social video company and has promised a June 5 launch date.
Airtime also acquired Erly, another startup funded by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which was founded by former KPCB partner and previous Hulu chief technology officer Eric Feng. Erly was creating what it described as a “new social platform for organizing and sharing your personal content, capabilities which the company’s blog said would be integrated into Airtime.
Erly’s philosophy is that an “experience graph” created from event pages that map people, time and locations is a more useful and logical social network structure than strict chronological time or widely cast nets of friends.
These news developments were confirmed by the companies involved, after TechCrunch showed it was already on their trail.
Related links:
Airtime – official site
Airtime – blog post
Erly – official site
Erly – blog post
TechCrunch – Sean Parker’s Stealth Video Startup Airtime Ready For Launch At June 5th Press Event
