Quirky
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Quirky, the super-hot New York startup founded by 24-year-old Ben Kaufman, just raised another $68 million in Series C funding.
That brings the total raised since it was founded in 2009 to $91.3 million.
This round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with significant participation from new investor Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers. So it also gets two new board members: Andreessen Horowitz’s Scott Weiss and Kleiner Perkins’ Mary Meeker. Weiss is perhaps best known as employee no. 13 at Hotmail before it was bought by Microsoft and the co-founder of IronPort (bought by Cisco).
Meeker is known as the “Queen of the Net” from her days as a powerhouse Morgan Stanley Internet stock analyst. Today she’s known for investing in companies like Groupon, Square and Spotify.
Quirky makes it super easy for people to turn their ideas into real life products. People submit ideas for $10 and other readers choose which are best. If an idea is chosen, Quirky will make the product and pay a lifetime royalty for it.
Quirky has so far launched more than 200 products, many sold at retail stores. Big hits include Pivot Power, Cordies and Crates. It has paid out over $2 million in royalties to inventors and has 260,000 people participating on the site.
Don’t miss: Here’s What It’s Like To Work For Quirky
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