I had lunch with another newly Leapfrog-funded CEO today -- Naval Ravikant. Naval is CEO of a company we are (for now) calling Omni-Explorer. Matt Marshall semi-outted them a few weeks ago. All he'll let me say is that Omni is a Web 2.0 search deal. Yeah search. Am I a lemming? I don’t think so. When I saw the tech, I got it immediately, because I have a fair amount of the search business in my background, too. But, without Naval, I wouldn’t have done this deal. Naval is brilliant – he is the synthesis of strategy and tech. Omni isn’t a bet on an algorithm. That would be VC lemming behavior. It is bet on Naval’s ability to build a great business leveraging great (and special) Web 2.0 search technologies. Naval, too, is a young man with a lot to prove (his fight with a couple of venture firms about Shopping.com was big headlines in the venture community when we did this deal), and it's good he has something to prove. Because when he wins, I’ll win.
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