Posted on 06/27/2013 5:05:13 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Twenty-one-year-old Lucas Duplan just raised more millions than his age.
The first-time entrepreneur and recent Stanford graduate (he finished a computer science degree in three years) has been working on a mobile payment app for the past two years. He's now been awarded $25 million from a long list of Silicon Valley investors which includes Andreessen Horowitz, Peter Thiel, Accel Partners' Jim Breyer, Intel, Intuit, former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, the founders of Qualcomm and VMware, and many others.
The kicker: The app hasn't launched yet and it isn't going to for a few more months. Duplan's 50-person team raised the entire $25 million – the largest seed round in Silicon Valley history – on a mere working prototype and a beta test at Stanford University.
Duplan says his pitch deck didn't move VCs to invest but as soon as he showed them the app they were compelled to back him. He's also secured a number of patents for his technology.
What is Clinkle, the wonder app that made investors open their wallets?
It's hard to say. Duplan declined to share many details prior to Clinkle's launch, which is expected to be released on iOS and Android later this year. All he revealed was this:
"Our goal is to completely modernize how payments work," Duplan says. "What we're trying to do is basically take your phone and have it for the first time be able to rival cash and credit cards. We've developed a way for consumers to download an app, no hardware needed, and achieve scale from a software point of view."
He also said the name Clinkle comes from the sound change makes and its ability to turn into a verb ("Clink this!"). Also, the domain was available.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/lucas-duplan-raises-25-million-seed-round-for-clinkle-2013-6#ixzz2XSro00UN
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Pfft.
NSA has had this kid’s app for the last year...
But what can they do with it?
But what can they do with it?
The next bitcoin?
Or the next Pay Pal?
Or the next vaporware?
According to LinkedIn, he’s been working on it since 2011. I would hope a VC wouldn’t fund a company this much without having some good indications of success, but, you never know.
Still living with a cheezy voice/text pre-paid.
Guess I’ll not know what the wonder is all about.
Yes, and at the age of 26 in 1902, Willis Carrier invented the first air conditioner. Now, I ask you: which is more important to mankind, the air conditioner or this “app”?
People in Africa have been paying bills via their [NonSmart]phones for years.
This has ESPIONAGE written allll over it.
Peter Thiel, Palantir Technologies — LOOK IT UP.
DO NOT USE THIS.
What about Pantir. I know people who work there, and have been contacted about working there.
On my phone.
Palantir, not pantir.
Palantir drives around storing the plate location of everyone anywhere always.
Some of their ops are good but they are the freaking DEATH STAR.
Do u hate the constitution? Work for them.
Coulduh picked a better name than clinkle.
Sounds nasty on so many levels.
Good for him though.
Marketing advice:
If u start a vaguely 1984-ish company....?
Avoid naming it after the devil-eye crystal ball of an evil sourcerer.
Ehhhh...yeah
PS- I guarantee u this co will NEVeR go public, but that would b owing to success, (opsec) not failure.
I'll bite.
Say it's a payment app.
They can track every transaction you make, report oddities to the IRS, flag you for an audit. They can drain your account. They can blackmail you when you buy flowers for your mistress.
Get it?
I suspect his app would simply have a interface to take directly from your bank acct at store instead of using a debit or credit card.
Good and bad with that. There could already be a app that does that. I would rather lose a credit card than use a cell phone.
But, I'm a luddite in many ways.
I mistyped. Palantir. Founded by J.R.R. Tolkien. On University Ave. in Palo Alto, in an office formerly occupied by Facebook.
And I read somewhere it’s fat girl socks or under the covers hood action.
It’s gets worse but, we are on a family channel ...
The fed already have agreements with financial institutions that enable them to receive real or near time reporting.
CALEA laws are obligatory and since the gubmint spent money on the systems these companies use, those institutions must make easy access to any information they target.
Thing is, the feds can’t create programs to address the myriad of OS’ and Dbase that exist, many of which are proprietary.
So, they ask financial institutions for similar “whole pipe” access and they just trawl everyone’s information and transactions.
This app will be one more marker in the investigative process.
I’ll think about it’s usefulness to .gov and do a write up.
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