eSnips Closes $2M in Series A Funding With Greylock Partners and Gemini

TEL AVIV, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--eSnips, Ltd., the first one-stop social content sharing site where like-minded members can share any digital content from one central location, today announced that the Company has closed $2 million a Series A funding round with Greylock Partners and Gemini Israel Funds. Funds will be used to accelerate product development and market expansion. The company further announced the election of Erez Ofer, a partner at Greylock Partners, to its board of directors.

“The additional funds will enable us to expand faster than we could otherwise, accelerate our product development and offer new offerings to customers in our existing communities, as well as attract new ones to the eSnips network.”

eSnips drives people to share, socialize, sell and promote their tastes, hobbies, interests, creative work and other aspects of their professional and personal live online. The service has been gaining more recognition as a key player in the social sharing space, particularly for allowing users to share every file type, not just photos, videos, audio, PDFs, or links. Users can create their own web space with personalized content that they can either share or keep private.

“eSnips provides a simplicity and comprehensiveness that can capture a mainstream Internet audience well beyond teens,” said Erez Ofer, partner at Greylock Partners. “As social sharing site use expands, the winning players will be those who provide a central location with broad appeal and strong e-commerce capabilities. eSnips is well-positioned to deliver upon on the promise of this sector,” Ofer said.

“The demand for the kind of service and community that eSnips is providing is evident by its significantly high user base of its product,” said Daniel Cohen, partner at Gemini Israel Funds. “eSnips appeals to a more mainstream audience, which is a growing need as social sharing sites start to become as ubiquitous as email. We are excited to continue our investment in eSnips vision and be a part of accelerating the growth of their business globally.”

“With nearly one million registered users worldwide, we are thrilled to be working with both Greylock and Gemini to further advance eSnips development and marketing efforts,” said Yael Elish, CEO of eSnips. “The additional funds will enable us to expand faster than we could otherwise, accelerate our product development and offer new offerings to customers in our existing communities, as well as attract new ones to the eSnips network.”

Elish adds, “People have lots of stuff to share and today they’re expected to use five to 10 different services to do it. With eSnips, people only need to go to one place for all their sharing needs. They can share any type of file or content and create as many separate sharing environments as they want. We want eSnips to be the one place where mainstream users go to for all their online sharing needs. Our goal is to make sharing your interests and passions easy, and to appeal to every user, not just the technical wizards or youth.”

About Greylock Partners

Founded in 1965, Greylock Partners is one of the world's leading venture capital firms. Over the past 41 years, Greylock has funded and helped build several hundred successful companies. The Greylock approach uniquely puts the entrepreneur first, with Greylock working as an "invited guest" in a highly supportive yet consultative way to help entrepreneurs build market-leading companies. Companies Greylock has funded include Ascend Communications, CheckFree, Continental Cable, Decru, DoubleClick, Internet Security Systems, Ikanos, Legato, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Openwave, Red Hat, RightNow Technologies, Tellabs, Trilogy and Wily Technology. Greylock's offices are located in Silicon Valley, the Boston area and Israel. For more information, please visit www.greylock.com.

About Gemini Israel Funds

A pioneer in Israel’s venture capital industry, Gemini Israel Funds has grown to be the leading Israeli seed and early stage fund in the Information Technology arena. The firm, founded in 1993, manages $550 million in four funds. Investments are focused in the areas of Communications and Wireless Technologies, Enterprise Software, Internet, Consumer Electronics and Semiconductors. Through our offices in Israel and Silicon Valley, Gemini offers portfolio companies access to top-tier U.S. based investors and a global network of corporate partners. Our job as Professional VCs is to serve our companies. We employ the same tools to help our companies today that we used to assist Saifun, Precise, Butterfly, Commtouch, Ornet, Verisity, Jacada, Ceragon, Riverhead, nLayers and others. More information can be found at www.gemini.co.il.

About eSnips, Ltd.

eSnips – http://www.esnips.com – is the social sharing site where like-minded members can share any digital content showcasing their talents, interests, and passions with whoever they choose from one place. The team behind eSnips includes Yael Elish, a veteran of several Internet start-ups and former Vice President of Strategic Development for Sunnyvale-based Commtouch Software and Nahum Sharfman, founder of Shopping.com and Commtouch. eSnips has received investments from Gemini Israel Funds and Greylock Partners.