Zivity Blog

Every startup founder is eventually confronted with the question, "Should we take more investment capital?" If you ask ten different founders their opinion on the matter, you'll likely get ten different answers. More money allows the organization to grow and develop, but it also means that more of the company is owned by what are often viewed as "outside interests".

As someone who was just faced with this question, I can tell you that there are lots of things to consider. For example, what is the company worth? How big of an option pool should we have? Will this be the final investment round? To me, though, those are not the most relevant questions. The more important questions are: (1) What are we trying to accomplish at this company? and, (2) Who can help us get there?

At Zivity, we knew we wanted to take more money. It’s all a matter of scale. Zivity is not aiming to be acquired; we are building a premium subscription social network, and we are aiming to be a multi-billion dollar global media company. Such a massive undertaking requires capital. So for us, it wasn't so much a matter of whether or not we would take additional investment, but rather how much we would take and from whom.

If you're reading this blog entry then you are probably already aware that Zivity just closed $7M in equity financing in its Series B round. Our institutional partners in the round are BlueRun Ventures and Founders Fund, neither of whom we consider "outside interests". They really are partners. With strong roots in social media and the digital landscape, they understand our vision and offer a lot more than just money to help us to achieve it. Choosing the right equity partners is one of the most important decisions a startup has to make. We have found true teammates in BlueRun Ventures and Founders Fund.

What will we be doing with the money? We're going to use it to build a social network unlike anything that's ever been seen before. Imagine a place where advertisers don't dictate which content is acceptable. Think about an environment where like-minded users can appreciate and help to redefine what beauty means.

It's not a small undertaking, and we need help doing it. Think of it this way ... in the early days at Zivity, a few of us arrived in a big, untamed jungle with a few machetes. We hacked our way through enough of the brush to create a small clearing. Now we want Zivity to take off and soar. Before it can, though, we need to build a runway. The money we just raised is going to enable us to build that runway. Starting now, we are aggressively adding to our team of engineers and others who will help us take off. Know how to fly? Have experience building runways? Come and join us!

The Zivity studio is so frenzied with post-Valentine’s day activity that we’ve hardly had time to see our sweethearts, let alone blog. But don’t fret — more time between posts means more new stuff to tell you.

For our beta testers: we hope you're ready. We've bundled a ton of new goodies into this Valentine's day(-ish) release, as well as eliminated oodles of bugs. Check your inbox for a full run-down on what's new then log into beta.zivity.com.

A note to you dedicated beta testers who've been with us a few months now — some of you may be notice that Zivity's look and feel is becoming a little, well, “smoother.” Less raucous. More consistent. What the heck is going on here? Did we sell out? Are we going “web 2.0?” Did we stop giving our designers the good drugs free reign?

Please. Zivity is growing, and to support that growth we’re moving toward a consistent visual look & feel that preserves the clean presentation of photography we have today, while making the rest of the experience more sexy and powerful. We’re doing lots of tuning and integrating behind the scenes, polishing the rough edges and nudging the entire site toward a more integrated, “next wave” of the Zivity visual experience. What you see with this release is the first step. We hope you like it. But this is really just the beginning. Based on the feedback we’re getting so far, we think you’re going to be both proud and excited to be part of the process.

Finally, zivity.com the website got a make-over too. Info about our business of models, as well as our business model, should be easier to find now. We've added a glorious FAQ to answer your burning questions about uploading photos and synergizing backward overflow across your fan-base. Oh and a press page with, you know, press stuff. And more models.

As always, our beta waiting list keeps growing but we admit new members to the beta site daily so stay tuned. If you haven't applied yet, what are you waiting for?

You Get What You Pay For
By Victoria Barret

Is sexier social networking worth $10 a month? This young couple thinks so.

Excerpt: “The hidden cost of free MySpace and Facebook, according to Banister, is censorship. “People can’t express themselves because advertisers want controls on content. Free is unfree,” he says. “We like to think of Zivity as the HBO of the Web.”

Read The Full Article

Jeffrey, Cyan, and Series A investor Vipul Ved Prakash were interviewed by NBC for a 4 minute TechNow segment.

The video includes behind-the-scenes photo shoot footage of Zivity Sweetheart Bella Sioux. Photographer: Marne Lucas from New York. Location: Supperclub San Francisco.

Scott explains why he doesn’t just tumble around playing video games and instead focuses on identifying new markets and creating jobs that people enjoy.

Zivity (James, Zivity Sweetheart Tessie, TC40 Judge MC Hammer, Cyan and John Manoogian III)

I’m on stage with expert panelists/judges and presenting companies in the 8th Session : MC Hammer, Brad Garlinghouse (Yahoo), Caterina Fake (Flickr), Loïc Le Meur (serial entrepreneur), Sarah Lacy (reporter/writer) and Michael Arrington (TechCrunch)

John and I presented to a large audience at TC40 and took 2nd place by winning the Howard Rice award .

American Venture interviews Zivity co-founder Cyan Banister. How will Zivity photography be clean enough for squeamish investors yet exciting enough to drive traffic? How will the models and photographers profit?

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“Taking it off for the Web”

Zivity, a social-networking startup that invites users to rate sexy photos submitted by other users, said Tuesday that it had raised $1 million.

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Zivity: Silicon Valley Elite Dabble in Adult Content

by Michael Arrington

Porn is big business, and the industry has been quick to adapt by copying successful features of new consumer Internet sites. But one thing we haven’t seen until now: respected Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors taking a direct interest in funding or running these sites.

The potential payoff from a successful adult site is clearly too high for Silicon Valley to continue to ignore the space, though. And San Francisco-based Zivity is going to be the first experiment out the door. The founders say Zivity isn’t porn, but that certainly depends on how you define the term. The primary content of the site is naked female models. Read Article

Zivity, a new adult social network start-up, has raised a $1 million round of seed capital from Silicon Valley investors — as it prepares for launch.

It’s not a porn site…Rather, it likens itself to a mixture of MySpace and Playboy magazine with popularity/voting features thrown in. Read Article