FixYa, an San Mateo, Calif.-based online technical support startup, has raised $6 million in Series B funding. Mayfield Fund led the round, and was joined by fellow return backer Pitango Venture Capital.
PRESS RELEASE
FixYa (http://www.fixya.com), the Web’s most popular place to get free advice for troubleshooting problems with gadgets, home appliances and consumer products, today announced that it received $6 million in Series B funding by Mayfield Fund and Pitango Venture Capital. The funding was led by Mayfield Fund. Both funds participated in Series A funding, led by Pitango. FixYa will use the funds to expand its business operations in the United States and Israel and to offer new products and services to its rapidly growing user base.
“Consumers are dealing with a tidal wave of increasingly complex products at the same time that fewer resources are being committed by manufacturers to customer service and support,” said Raj Kapoor, managing director at Mayfield Fund and former CEO of Snapfish.com, who will join FixYa’s board. “We are proud to accelerate FixYa’s mission of helping consumers with this reality and the challenges they face as a result. FixYa’s community-based approach creates an efficient marketplace where people can ask questions and get answers to any high- or low-tech problem they may have with their gadgets or other products.”
FixYa was launched in August 2005 by Yaniv Ben-Saadon, a seasoned entrepreneur of numerous consumer Internet ventures and former spokesperson for the Consul General of Israel in Miami. By January 2007, FixYa had 400,000 monthly unique visitors and raised $2 million in Series A with an initial seed investment from Mayfield Fund and Pitango Venture Capital. Today, fourteen months later, FixYa has achieved operational balance and has more than 6 million monthly unique visitors and covers more than 800,000 consumer products in all categories, from lawn mowers and strollers to iPods and hard drives.
“Yaniv has exceeded every milestone he set for FixYa because of his team’s ability to respond rapidly to the needs of the FixYa community. We have good reason to believe that the pace of the company’s growth in the multi-billion dollar consumer-support market will continue unabated as more and more consumers make FixYa the go-to place to get help with their product questions,” said Rami Beracha, managing general partner at Pitango Venture Capital.
FixYa makes it easy for anyone to get answers fast to any question about a problem or challenge, from setting up a home theater system or home appliance, to troubleshooting laptops and digital cameras. People can quickly find their specific product model on FixYa and easily post a question or share their expertise by contributing a helpful answer. More than 100,000 new questions and answers are posted every month. Product-category experts and other members of the community answer most questions in fewer than 12 hours. Users can upgrade to FixYa Premium Assistance to get even faster, guaranteed technical assistance via live chat with verified experts.
“Everybody at some point has experienced the frustration of waiting on hold or web crawling through message boards for an answer to a product question. FixYa is simply the fastest and easiest way to get an answer to any question, from the most basic to the highly technical, because we’ve succeeded in attracting an enormous community of product experts,” said Yaniv Ben-Saadon, founder and CEO of FixYa. “Mayfield Fund and Pitango Venture Capital bring a wealth of entrepreneurial and consumer Internet expertise that will help us expand our business operations and increase our product and technical infrastructure to support our growth.”
About FixYa
FixYa is the Web’s most popular place for free product support and advice. Millions of users rely on FixYa’s community of product experts for quick answers to any question about any product, from gadgets to gardening tools. FixYa is headquartered in San Mateo, CA. More information is available at: http://www.fixya.com.
About Mayfield Fund
Over the past 38 years, Mayfield Fund has been at the forefront of investing in emerging businesses that have grown into industry leaders. Mayfield Fund invests in the U.S., China and India and currently has $2.7 billion under management. It has invested in over 480 companies of which 105 have had initial public offerings and another 160 have been acquired. Some of Mayfield past impact investments include Compaq, Amgen, SGI, 3COM, Sandisk, Citrix, Cypress Semiconductor, Intuitive Surgical, webMethods, Tibco, 3PAR Data and LSI Logic.
About Pitango Venture Capital
Pitango Venture Capital, the leading venture capital firm in Israel, has been investing in technology entrepreneurs since 1993. With offices in Israel and Silicon Valley, California, Pitango currently manages several venture funds totaling over $1.3 billion in committed capital invested in more than 100 companies. Pitango invests in high-growth companies in seed and early stages, supporting them as they grow. Pitango’s investment focus includes: Communications; Networking & Storage; Wireless, Cellular and Mobile technologies; Enterprise Software, Internet and Media; Healthcare & Life Sciences, and Clean Technologies.
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