CloudCrowd Receives $5.1 Million in Venture Capital Funding

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- CloudCrowd, a Labor-as-a-Service provider, has announced the company has raised $5.1 million in a Series B funding round.  Led by Menlo Park-based Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), a leading global early-stage venture capital fund with deep domain experience in evolutionary Internet technologies, the new funding will enable the company to expand the services and features of its rapidly growing on-demand labor platform and drive its business development efforts.

CloudCrowd uses the Internet to tap into its workforce of more than 35,000 registered workers to complete tasks, helping clients reduce overhead, increase efficiency, and lower costs.  Tasks are distributed through a proprietary online platform, providing work and income to CloudCrowd's growing global workforce.

"CloudCrowd's platform allows businesses an unprecedented opportunity to have large volumes of work completed quickly and cost-effectively, while their peer-review process and robust credibility management ensure that tasks are done accurately," said Andreas Stavropoulos, a Managing Director at DFJ.  "We believe that CloudCrowd will redefine how companies source and manage a wide range of business processes."

"We're delighted to be joining with DFJ, who from the start embraced our vision for a transformational platform with the ability to reinvent business processes," said CloudCrowd CEO, Alex Edelstein.  "This funding is a great vote of confidence in the long term potential of our company. We are the fastest growing on-demand labor provider in our market, and we plan to use this funding to invest even more heavily in ensuring the success of our customers and to further accelerate our growth."

CloudCrowd is a Crowdsourcing 2.0 solution.  First generation outsourcing solutions offer a limited range of feasible tasks that require excessive management and deliver unreliable work quality.  CloudCrowd is evolutionary because it can handle much more complex tasks.  Utilizing a proprietary peer review and worker credibility system designed to ensure the accuracy of finished work, CloudCrowd can complete projects in a fraction of the time required by traditional outsourcing methods.  Since launching in 2009, CloudCrowd has already completed more than 1.5 million tasks for its customers and its EditZen service has proofread and edited more than 1 million words.  

About CloudCrowd

Committed to providing fast and reliable on-demand Labor-as-a-Service business solutions, CloudCrowd is a privately held company based in San Francisco, California. Founded in 2009, CloudCrowd was started by experienced visionaries from breakthrough pioneers including Microsoft, Netscape, Inktomi, Napster, and Cloudmark. CloudCrowd powers EditZen, the low-cost leader in professional proofreading and editing services, and TranslationZen, which uses the power of CloudCrowd's workforce to translate documents in a fraction of the time and less than half the cost of traditional translation.  The company was named one of the "100 Most Brilliant Companies of 2010" by Entrepreneur Magazine.  For more information go to www.cloudcrowd.com.

About Draper Fisher Jurvetson

DFJ backs extraordinary entrepreneurs everywhere who set out to change the world.  DFJ achieves its mission through its DFJ Global Network of Partner Funds.  Together, DFJ and the Network manage over $7B and have invested in more than 600 companies.  With a 25-year history of success across diverse sectors and market conditions, DFJ has led the way investing in emerging technologies, from the Internet and life sciences to clean energy and nanotechnology.  DFJ has been proud to back industry changing successes in the Internet such as Hotmail (acquired by MSFT), United Online (UNTD), Overture (acquired by YHOO), Baidu (BIDU), Skype (acquired by EBAY); mobility companies such as AdMob (acquired by GOOG), Mobile365 (acquired by Sybase) and Good Technologies; cleantech companies such as EnerNoc (ENOC), Tesla (TSLA), SolarCity, and Brightsource Energy; and life science companies such as Athenahealth (ATHN) and ePocrates.  Named by TechCrunch as the "Top Networked Venture Capitalist," DFJ's Network covers more co-investors and geographic regions than any other venture capital firm.  For more information go to www.dfj.com.

SOURCE CloudCrowd