2/19/08 - Featured Company: CircleUp
Web Site: www.circleup.com
Headquarters: Newport Beach, Calif.
Year Founded: 2006
Founders: John Payne; Doug Tung; Jim Jonassen
Investors: Sid R. Bass Associates and early angel investors
Employees: 15
Total Capital Raised: $3 Million
Company News: www.circleup.com/my/cu/info/press/
*Updated: 2/19/08
By John Payne, Co-Founder and CEO
The evolution of emailing has been incredible to watch since its inception. From a techie tool used by engineers, academics and scientists to the defacto method of communication for hundreds of millions of people, email has transformed the way that people from all walks of life communicate. Instant messaging has been hot on its heels in the younger demographic and is now reaching critical mass even in the enterprise. With emails worldwide totaling almost 100 billion messages daily, an almost unmanageable torrent of information flows every single day. And with the emergence of the social platforms and their proprietary messaging and publishing systems at places like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5 and others, the problem of group collaboration and communication across these heterogenous messaging systems has continued to grow.
It is no surprise that although Internet communications among groups is the most widely used collaboration tool in existence, the messaging systems themselves have proven to be relatively inefficient when it comes to group communication and information gathering.
For a year now, CircleUp has turbo-charged group communication via email, instant messaging and social networking services already in use around the world today. Where messaging has failed, CircleUp has taken the lead in creating an innovative communications tool that allows users to gather information, make plans or decisions and collaborate more effectively. CircleUp is a social communications service for real world groups that is built to make people’s lives easier and reduce information overload.