Al Gore and Bono invest in Biz Stone's mystery startup
The Twitter co-founder's new company, Jelly, closes its first round of funding with a celebrity-studded group of investors, including tech notables Jack Dorsey, Reid Hoffman, and Evan Williams.
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has picked up some interesting celebrity investors for his mysterious mobile startup, Jelly.
The list, published in a company blog post Thursday, includes rock star Bono, former vice president Al Gore, and Greg Yaitanes, the director of TV shows "Lost" and "Heroes."
"We chose angels like Al Gore, a partner at KPCB and chairman and co-founder of Generation Investment Management, Greg Yaitanes, a Hollywood director, and Roya Mahboob, an entrepreneur doing amazing work for women in Afghanistan partly because they work in divergent fields. Knowledge diversity is something we prize highly and is also something that will be represented in our product," the blog post reads.
Yaitanes, an angel investor of Twitter, and Gore, a partner at venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, are no strangers to tech investments.
Jelly didn't say how much money it raised in the round.
Jelly's investors include some tech notables as well: fellow Twitter co-founders Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, The Obvious Corporation co-founder Jason Goldman, science writer Steven Johnson, and Roya Mahboob, one of the first female IT CEOs in Afghanistan.
Spark Capital led this first round of funding with additional investment from SV Angel. Spark General Partner Bijan Sabet will now serve on Jelly's board of directors.
Stone launched the startup earlier this year. It is expected to create a product that people can use on smartphones or tablets. The funding announcement didn't give any concrete examples of what Jelly actually is, but it will may involve the intersection of mobile tech and the social good.
"As mobile devices have taken an increasingly central role in our lives, humanity has grown more connected than ever--herein lies massive opportunity," the post reads. "With this capital raise, Jelly has the means to hire more great talent and continue building what we think of as the natural next step for our connected society. We will share more about Jelly from a product perspective when we move beyond early prototyping."