Kirsten Green leads the $8 million financing for Marissa Mayer New Startup Dazzle
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Kirsten Green leads the $8 million financing for Marissa Mayer New Startup Dazzle. CREDIT: Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group / Getty Images.
Learn How Kirsten Green leads the $8 million financing for Marissa Mayer New Startup Dazzle. Marissa Mayer, the former CEO of Yahoo, is adamant about participating in the generative AI revolution.
- Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s new firm, Dazzle, has raised $8 million, led by investor Kirsten Green.
- With its emphasis on generative AI, Dazzle represents Marissa Mayer’s successful return to the digital startup scene.
- The funding shows that investors are becoming more confident in AI-driven firms run by seasoned Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.
The legendary tech leader shut down Sunshine
The legendary tech leader shut down Sunshine, a photo-sharing and contact-management venture that had little success over the previous six years, to start Dazzle, a new business aimed at creating the next generation of AI personal assistants.
Mayer has disclosed that the new business has raised a $8 million seed round at a $35 million valuation, although she has not yet disclosed details of Dazzle’s functionality. Kleiner Perkins, Greycroft, Offline Ventures, Slow Ventures, and Bling Capital participated in the round, which was headed by Kirsten Green of Forerunner. Mayer acknowledged that she contributed her personal money to the firm, but she stressed that Green, a venture capitalist with a legendary track record of spotting well-known consumer brands including Dollar Shave Club, Chime, and Warby Parker, led the round.
Dazzle appears to be well-positioned
Dazzle appears to be well-positioned for the upcoming wave of new AI-infused consumer enterprises, based on Green’s investment. While enterprise AI had the early lead in this innovation cycle, consumer-facing AI is a “late bloomer” that is finally prepared for its breakout, according to the founder of Forerunner Ventures, who previously told Indifact News.
Getting Green as a key investor is a huge boost to Dazzle’s reputation, even for a founder of Mayer’s stature, especially because Sunshine was mostly regarded as a failure. Mayer remarked, “I think she really has a great sense of where people and platforms are going.”
The Sunshine team started prototyping Dazzle last summer, and Mayer told Indifact News that the project swiftly surpassed their earlier work in terms of opportunity and ambition. She stated, “We realized that this was something that we were much more excited about,” pointing out that Dazzle could have “a much bigger impact” than what Sunshine was constructing.
Sunshine was first established in 2018
Sunshine was first established in 2018 as Lumi Labs and debuted with a contact management subscription app called “Sunshine Contacts.” The product has trouble gaining traction despite the high profile of its inventor. The app’s technique of obtaining home addresses from public databases to enhance contact lists alarmed privacy experts, and the business never fully recovered from the initial suspicion. Event management and “Shine,” an AI-powered photo-sharing tool, were added by 2024 as part of the company’s expansion. The new product failed to garner broad use and was heavily criticized for its antiquated design.
Investors such as Felicis, Norwest Venture Partners, and Unusual Ventures contributed a total of $20 million to Sunshine. According to Mayer, investors received 10% of Dazzle’s stock upon the company’s dissolution.
Mayer was open about Sunshine’s shortcomings when reflecting on the company’s struggle, acknowledging that the issues it was addressing were too “mundane” and insufficiently big. She continued, “I don’t think we got it to the overall polish and accessibility that I really wanted it to be.”
With Dazzle, Mayer is now wagering that the lessons learned from Sunshine will enable her to create a much more robust and significant company.
Prior to becoming CEO of Yahoo, Mayer worked at Google as employee number 20, where she oversaw the creation of Google Maps and AdWords and contributed to the “look and feel” of the Google search engine.
Mayer told Indifact News, “I have had the rare privilege of working at two companies that really changed how people do things.” Many people believe that Yahoo defined the internet. With regard to Maps and Search, Google completely transformed the game. I sincerely hope to create a product with that type of influence once more.
Early in the upcoming year, Dazzle is anticipated to emerge from stealth mode.
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