We have some exciting news to share. Today, CrunchBase is entering its next phase of growth and spinning out of AOL to become a standalone company. As you may have seen in the press, CrunchBase will now become a venture-backed company, like the many companies it profiles on its site. Emergence Capital, one of the top cloud venture capital firms, is leading an investment round in CrunchBase to help fund its expansion.
We started in 2007 as a homegrown project with humble beginnings in indexing startups featured in TechCrunch articles. With the help of TechCrunch and AOL, we amassed an audience that took a life of its own. Eight years later, we find ourselves today at the center of the startup and entrepreneurial ecosystem, serving the twenty million people a year that depend on us.
CrunchBase is what it is today because of its community. As Yelp has done for helping you choose where to eat, and Wikipedia has done for helping you research anything, we have come together as a community of contributors to change the way information about companies is gathered, shared, and understood. None of this would have been possible without people like you who are giving back to this community every day.
This type of community is extremely hard to build, and we know this is something special. That’s why we’re committed to preserving the openness and accessibility of the CrunchBase that you know and love.
Looking ahead, we can’t wait to share with you the exciting things we’re building, and we would love to get your input about what you would like to see.
Personally, I am so proud and privileged to join this effort. In my eleven years of building product at Salesforce, I witnessed the rise of a company that fundamentally changed the way people thought about accessing software. Today, I’m excited to join an organization that is reinventing the way people find and leverage company data, and I’m thrilled to be working with Matt Kaufman and the outstanding team at CrunchBase.
In closing, thank you for being part of our community and helping to build CrunchBase to where it is today. I’m incredibly excited that you’re with us on this next step in our journey.
— Jager McConnell, CEO, CrunchBase
