The Google of the application world, Quixey, has raised $3.8 million in its first financing round. Quixey was founded by Israelis CEO Tomer Kagan and CTO Liron Shapira.
The funding comes from US Venture Partners, WI Harper Group, Web Investment Network, along with additional funding from Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors . This is Schmidt's second round of investment in the company, after providing $400,000 in seed funding last April. Quixey has raised a total of $4.2 million to date.
"We intend to use the $3.8 million to continue the expansion of Quixey, which partners with websites, app stores, search engines and carriers," said Kagan. "People want to locate apps for the platforms and devices that they use. We initiated these various partnerships in an effort to improve the search engines."
Kagan said that Quixey has formed 30 partnerships with websites and app stores, but he declined to give specific names. "Our partners understand that they need a smarter solution for their search engine application to increase downloads, hits, and interaction with users - and this is where we enter the picture. Instead of developing an app that people download, we create customized app search engines."
A navigator is needed for the sea of apps that is currently flooding the Internet and the smartphone world and to find the actual app you are looking for. 18 months ago, this convinced Kagan and Shapira to develop a search engine that locates all types of apps. Until now, it has been necessary to visit the Apple Store or Google's Android to look for an app. Quixey is trying to organize all of the different types of applications, including for Firefox, Macintosh, and Internet Explorer.
In early August, Quixey upgraded its search engine by adding the ability to conduct searches on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and foursquare. Quixey's technological advantage over regular searches like iPhone or Android is its ability to identify what the user is really looking for. Whereas app stores search for apps by name or description, Quixey's engine pulls in information automatically from blogs, forums, review sites and social networks and analyzes it.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on August 29, 2011
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