But the early funders of the Heritage Foundation included some Fortune 500 companies, in fields such as oil, chemicals, and tobacco, that opposed health, safety, and environmental regulations.
There's no promise of returns to those early funders — even if the company becomes the next Google or Prada.
The Prague based company has received funding from Mangrove Partners (early funders of Skype) and Index Ventures, and has received an overwhelmingly positive response in private beta testing (Update: except among the people who've left comments below!).
The round includes money from new participants HSBC and Harmony Partners with contributions from earlier funders Allegis Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Citi Ventures, Cisco, Sutter Hill Ventures and Tenaya Capital.
Philosophers in the Valley: like the early Facebook funder Peter Thiel and the Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, the LinkedIn founder and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman has a serious background and abiding interest in philosophy.
Four states -- New Jersey, Illinois, Ohio and Minnesota -- have been awarded $350,000 each from the Early Childhood Funders Collaborative, a nonprofit group that advocates education for children under age 5.
Some early stage funders will invest in a specific area only because they want to be physically close to their investments, or because their investor base demands it.
Early on, funders like Dow Corning (a joint venture between Dow Chemical and Corning ) and electric utility UniSource Energy together chipped in $18 million for technological development.
Their returns have put him on the Forbes Midas List of top early-stage funders.
