Christine

Yummly Raises $6M for Hiring (and Gratuitous Bacon)

Love food? Delicious semantic search engine Yummly has just raised $6M in Series A financing to continue expanding into a complete digital kitchen platform. (Disclosure: Intel Capital is an investor in Yummly.) I'm happy to welcome Physic Ventures and Unilever to the board, and even more excited that the team can start expanding. (Note: Giant gratuitous bacon photo courtesy of Cathy Brooks on Flickr.)

Towards that end, we're looking for great developers, UX designers, researchers, and marketers that have a passion for food. There's a great post by Kevin Fitchard on GigaOm that touches on Yummly's product roadmap:

"Yummly’s core technology, which breaks down recipes and ingredients into raw culinary data, from which it extracts everything from calorie and saturated fat content to more conceptual notions of saltiness, sourness or bitterness. If it knows you’re a vegetarian, the Yummly search engine will weed out recipes that contain an ingredient that once walked, flew or swam.

"...[CEO Dave] Feller said that the semantic technology Yummly has built has a lot more potential than the search engine lets on. Its current staff of 10 just doesn’t have the resources to build new products to tap into that potential. So Yummly plans to use its new $6 million to go on hiring spree and roll out new cooking applications and features. Some of those products will be the typical tablet apps and shopping list services we see proliferating on cooking sites and services today, but others will make more specific use of the vast food vocabulary Yummly has spent two years learning.

"Feller said Yummly first needs to build upon its core search engine, which he characterized as being more a proof-of-concept –- though it's a proof-of-concept that gets 4 million unique visitors a month. It currently aggregates more than 600,000 recipes from 15 sites, ranging from the Food Network to AllRecipes, but it will expand its scope into further culinary corners of Web."

As someone who loves to cook, I'm a happy user (you can find me under "tribal kitchen goddess") and eager to see the company's deep understanding of food extended into other services and across additional platforms. Can you help? Check out their jobs page and join the kitchen brigade!

GTD meets SXSW! Where Founders and VCs Will Meet

SXSW Interactive enables the usual tech crowd license to follow fascinations for a few days....like a clean (I mean this both literally and figuratively) version of Burning Man, or an enormous, structured version of FOO Camp. But let's not pretend we aren't also here to Get Things Done. Here are a few great places to start building connections this week in Austin:

1. 10 Minute VC  - Sunday 3/11, 2:00-5:00 PM. Hosted by Intel Capital (yep, I'll be hosting a table) and Blumberg Capital.

Are you an entrepreneur, someone thinking about becoming an entrepreneur, or a talented maker who would like to join a startup? Join Blumberg Capital and Intel Capital in Austin for 10 Minute VC, Texas-style. On Sunday, March 11th, Christine Herron, Carey Lai, and Lucy McQuilken from Intel Capital, along with David Blumberg, Bruce Taragin, Jon Soberg, and Ankur Jain of Blumberg Capital, will be your hosts in Austin. We'll be available for 10-minute chats, and you set the agenda. (Hat tip to Kent Goldman from First Round Capital for galvanizing the investor community around this concept!) Feel free to give us your quick pitch, ask questions, or just start a relationship. If you can't get a meeting time, then come join us for a drink - Vince Young's has five local beers on tap and the bar will be open.

Make sure to register to attend as capacity for both meeting and mixing is (sadly) limited. Grab your time slot when you register, and plan to arrive at least 10 minutes early so that the good folks from Venture Further can get you checked in and ready.

2. Startup Village. Daily during Interactive from 9:30 AM - 6:00 PM. Organized by SXSW.

Startup Village brings together the startups, entrepreneurs, investors, and cutting-edge digital tastemakers within the 2012 SXSW Interactive Festival. Located primarily on the fourth floor of the Downtown Austin Hilton, this space showcases the various startup events at SXSW Interactive (including SXSW Accelerator, as well as startup-related panels, Meet Ups, lounges, pitch events and mentoring / coaching sessions).

A new addition to the 2012 schedule, Startup Village consolidates much of what already happens at SXSW Interactive into one location. Current and future entrepreneurs will benefit from learning and networking with investors, technology trailblazers, media representatives, as well as digital creatives from the three exciting industries that come to Austin for SXSW (Interactive, Music and Film). Startups are an important part of the world economy as well as an important element of SXSW Interactive -- we are very excited about all that Startup Village will bring to the 2012 event.

3. Co-Founder Speed Dating. Saturday - Sunday 3/10-11, multiple sessions. Organized by Capital Factory and DreamIt Ventures.

What better place to find your co-founder than at SXSW where tens of thousands of like-minded people from around the world are mashed up together? On both Saturday and Sunday afternoon Capital Factory & DreamIt Ventures will be running multiple sessions of co-founder speed dating. You tell us what you are looking for and we will play the matchmaker. In just an hour, you’ll meet a dozen potential co-founders hand-picked for you.

4. SXSW Accelerator. Monday - Tuesday 3/12-13, 9:00 AM - 6:30 PM. Organized by SXSW and Microsoft Bizspark. (Yours truly MC'ing on Monday afternoon!)

The fourth annual SXSW Accelerator will take March 12-14 at the 2012 SXSW Festival in Austin Texas. A live audience, as well as a panel of expert judges will be discovering advancements in social media, mobile applications, web entertainment, and more. The best part? Product demonstrations by the most ambitious talents in the world with the most creative new ideas to change it. We will catch a glimpse of the industry's future, with a guided tour by our emcees and judges.

This competition will be unlike any other. On March 12, forty-eight companies battle for your taste-making, trend-setting attention, leading to a fireworks display of innovation. Connections will be made and careers launched. On Tuesday March 13, the top eighteen companies will be invited back, and at the end of the day winners of SXSW Accelerator will be announced. 

5. Startup America Live. Daily during Interactive from 9:45 AM - 6:00 PM. Organized by Startup America.

4 full days of programming featuring iconic entrepreneurs and brand new startups remaking iconic game shows like “The Price is Right,” “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” and “Minute to Win It”. Startups will compete for amazing prizes that will help their companies. Mornings with Jesse Draper recapping the coolest stuff going on in Startup Village. The chance to hang with people like: Steve Blank, Kay Koplovitz, Gary Shapiro, and Eric Ries. One on one time with leading experts during all-day office hours, schedule here: http://www.s.co/content/startup-america-live-sxsw-office-hours/

Note that I haven't posted private events...there are a bunch of these to attend as well, if you can wrangle invitations. Austin-based accelerator Capital Factory has also put together the Ultimate Startup Guide to SXSW 2012 - definitely check it out for more tips.

If you see other great VC-entrepreneur connection opportunities, please share in the comments. See you here in Austin!