One to watch: Garrett Camp, 29
Company: StumbleUpon/eBay
Funding: Acquired by eBay in May, 2007, for $75 million
Co-founder and chief architect Camp created StumbleUpon as a social search tool bar that plugs into an Internet browser and recommends Web sites based on the shared interests of other users. It now helps more than 5 million people find all manner of interesting sites on the Web. In the future, the technology behind StumbleUpon could help recommend items to eBay shoppers based on like-minded users’ purchases.
Advice: “Get a good demo and a reasonable interface before you ask for a lot of money… . Try to bootstrap and self-fund for at least a little while,” says Camp. “Don’t go in right away and give away 35% of your company on Day One for $100,000. It definitely helped us get good terms that we could show we could get by on so little.”