I invested in Snapguide, which launched today to a mountain of positive press, well before CrunchFund was formed last year, although the investment was later transferred to the fund. It was an incredibly easy decision.
Back in 2010 Daniel Raffel and Steve Krulewitz left their senior product/engineering jobs at Yahoo and Google, respectively, to start a new company. I broke the news about the startup, although they wouldn’t tell me what they were going to build (I don’t think they even knew yet).
It didn’t matter. I told Daniel I wanted to invest. He and Steve are what’s called “blank check guys” in the VC world. That means you invest in them if you can no matter what crazy ideas they have, because they are so smart and so driven that they’ll likely figure out a way to win big eventually.
Mike Volpi at Index ventures put together a round, and I invested, in June last year.
So what is Snapguide, who’s Leslie, and why will she love it?
Leslie is a TechCruncher who may have written the saddest tweet ever about trying out Pair (a social network for couples) even though she doesn’t have anyone to try it out with.
Leslie says she’ll try out any app if we’re an investor, so she needs to try out Snapguide today. The app is full of amazing how-to guides, and it doesn’t require a boyfriend to use it properly. But that description doesn’t adequately describe Snapguide.
First, it’s made for mobile devices, and it assumes you’ll have that device with you while you’re following the guides. Lots of big, beautiful pictures and videos. Easy to follow directions. And you can chat with other users and the guide creator as well.
There are already some great guides on Snapguide, even though it just launched. But what the service really needs is new guides! There’s something that you are amazing at, right?
Maybe you have the best ever recipe for something that you made up and perfected over the years and want to share. Or you know how to build a house using only duct tape and old tires. Or you are the worlds leading expert on making sock puppets. Whatever. Make a guide and see if the world loves it. I bet they do.
More on Snapguide at Pando Daily, TechCrunch, GigaOm, LifeHacker and AllThingsD.
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