The previous Yahoo CEO, Marissa Mayer, refuses to take a seat on the sidelines of the generative AI revolution.
After spending the final six years operating Sunshine, a photo-sharing and contact-management startup with little success, the storied tech chief has shuttered the corporate to launch Dazzle, a brand new startup centered on constructing the following technology of AI private assistants.
Whereas Mayer just isn’t but sharing specifics about Dazzle’s performance, she has revealed that the brand new firm has raised an $8 million seed spherical at a $35 million valuation. The spherical was led by Forerunner’s Kirsten Inexperienced, with participation from Kleiner Perkins, Greycroft, Offline Ventures, Sluggish Ventures, and Bling Capital. Though Mayer has admitted to investing her personal capital within the startup, she emphasised that the spherical was led by Inexperienced, a enterprise capitalist with a storied document of figuring out iconic client manufacturers resembling Warby Parker, Chime, and Greenback Shave Membership.
Inexperienced’s funding suggests Dazzle is poised for the approaching wave of latest AI-infused client companies. The founding father of Forerunner Ventures beforehand informed TechCrunch that whereas enterprise AI took the early lead on this tech cycle, consumer-facing AI is a “late bloomer” that’s lastly prepared for its breakout.
Even for a founding father of Mayer’s fame, touchdown Inexperienced as a lead investor is a big stamp of credibility for Dazzle, particularly after Sunshine was broadly thought of to be a flop. “I believe she actually has an amazing sense for the place folks and platforms are going,” Mayer mentioned.
Mayer informed TechCrunch that the Sunshine crew started prototyping Dazzle final summer time, a challenge that shortly eclipsed their earlier work in ambition and alternative. “We realized that this was one thing that we had been way more enthusiastic about,” she mentioned, noting that Dazzle has potential for “a a lot greater affect” than what Sunshine was constructing.
Initially based as Lumi Labs in 2018, Sunshine first launched with a subscription app for contact administration dubbed “Sunshine Contacts.” Regardless of its founder’s excessive profile, the product struggled to realize traction. Privateness advocates raised alarms over the app’s follow of pulling dwelling addresses from public databases to complement contact lists, and the corporate by no means recovered from the preliminary skepticism. By 2024, the corporate broadened its providing by including occasion administration and “Shine,” an AI-powered photo-sharing instrument. The brand new providing was broadly criticized for its outdated design and equally failed to draw widespread utilization.
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Sunshine raised a complete of $20 million from traders, together with Felicis, Norwest Enterprise Companions, and Uncommon Ventures. When the corporate was dissolved, traders obtained 10% of Dazzle’s fairness, Mayer mentioned.
Reflecting on Sunshine’s wrestle, Mayer was candid about its limitations, admitting the issues the corporate was tackling had been too “mundane” and never massive sufficient. “I don’t assume we acquired it to the state of total polish and accessibility that I actually needed it to be,” she added.
Mayer is now betting that the teachings from Sunshine will assist her construct a way more resilient and impactful enterprise with Dazzle.
Earlier than her tenure as Yahoo CEO, Mayer was worker quantity 20 at Google, the place she helped design Google search ‘appear and feel’, and oversaw the event of Google Maps and AdWords.
“I’ve had the uncommon privilege of being at two corporations that actually modified how folks do issues,” Mayer informed TechCrunch. “Yahoo, for a lot of, outlined the web. Google, by way of Search and Maps, modified every part. I actually aspire to construct a product that has that form of affect once more.”
Dazzle is predicted to come back out of stealth mode early subsequent 12 months.
