Fred Wilson praises Loic Le Meur's startup — but will he invest?
Why is entrepreneur Loic Le Meur grinning from ear to ear? VC Fred Wilson declares that he's getting addicted to the "video Twittering" provided by Seesmic, Le Meur's new startup. But it's not clear that Wilson's going to put his money where his mouth is.
Le Meur has already snagged $6 million in venture capital for Seesmic, a site which is a bit like YouTube, a bit like Twitter, and a bit like Justin.tv. His new investors include Reid Hoffman, the hyperconnected chairman of LinkedIn; Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, and angel investor Ron Conway, the startup ATM of Silicon Valley.
So why is Wilson in town? Here's where it gets interesting. Brad Feld of Foundry Group, a frequent coinvestor with Wilson's Union Square Ventures, announced on Twitter yesterday that he was in San Francisco to meet with the New York-based Wilson, who had just flown in on a delayed flight. Shortly after he landed, Wilson posted a video to Seesmic. Feld then posted that he had just attended an unnamed startup's board meeting, which planned to announce his investment on Monday.
Not Seesmic, though — that company plans to launch, officially, at Demo at the end of this month. Announcing the company on Monday would be a breach of etiquette, at the very least, for a participant in the prestigious startup conference. And Le Meur is too French to be so blatantly impolite.
So what are Wilson and Feld up to? Given Feld's and Wilson's Twitters, it doesn't seem like there would have been time for them to meet yesterday, except at the unnamed startup's board meeting. It makes sense that they'd be in cahoots on another deal. The other clues in Feld's blog post: The company is headed by a "star" with previous startup successes, has about 20 employees, and is hiring another 20, including two software product managers. Any ideas? Leave them in the comments, or drop us a line.