About.me, a US-based platform for creating individual profile pages, is spinning out of local internet services provider AOL two years after its acquisition.
About.me has raised $5.7m as part of its exit from AOL, which has used its corporate venturing units to retain a stake in the ongoing business. AOL will reportedly retain an 8% equity stake in About.me.
Alongside AOL’s CrunchFund and AOL Ventures in the spinout, were Google Ventures, which invests on behalf of the eponymous search engine provider, venture Capital firms True Ventures, which led the round, Founder Collective, Gunderson Dettmer, Bullpen Capital, Radar Partners, Softtech VC, and SV Angel and angel investors Bill Tai, David Mahoney and Shervin Pishevar.
Ryan Freitas & Tony Conrad, About.me’s co-founders, said in their blog: “Just a few short days after our public launch in December 2010, we shared the exciting news that we’d been acquired by AOL. We committed ourselves then to building the best product to make it easy for people to learn about you and to find your content on the web.
“Twenty-four months and several million about.me pages later, we continue our commitment to building the best personal identity service on the web. During the past two years, we’ve been thankful for the tremendous resources and support of our friends and partners at AOL.
“Today, we’re thrilled to announce that we’ll be spinning About.me back out, returning to life as an independent company that is financially backed by our management team and a truly amazing group of investors who have backed companies such as WordPress and Google.”