SlideShare, backed by Mark Cuban, Get $3M
SlideShare, the PowerPoint social network backed by Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and others, has closed on a $3 million A round led by Venrock, the company announced Thursday. David Siminoff, a general partner at Venrock, will get a seat on SlideShare’s board of directors in the wake of the funding. SlideShare, which competes against document-sharing sites like Scribd, SplashCast and SlideBoom, said it plans to use the funding to expand its operations in San Francisco, develop new products and add customers. The company, previously based in Mountain View, California, said more than 300,000 presentations have been posted on its site, which also accepts OpenOffice and PDF presentations. In addition to the Venrock financing, the funding round includes angel investments from Friendster founder Jonathan Abrams, Hal Varian, chief economist at Google, and Mr. Cuban, who sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo in a $5 billion stock deal in 1999. SlideShare’s advisory board includes: Guy Kawasaki, an early Apple employee and founder of Truemors; Ross Mayfield, co-founder of Socialtext and Mr. Varian. “Millions of presentations are shared every day across the globe; presentations have become the primary way to illustrate your business idea,” SlideShare Chief Executive and co-founder Rashmi Sinha said in a statement. “The Web and rise of social networking has added new dimensions-–users now have the access and ability to share ideas on an enormous scale.”