i/o Ventures

i/o Ventures is a Silicon Valley-based startup funding firm, started in 2009 by Aber Whitcomb (co-founder of MySpace), Ashwin Navin (co-founder of BitTorrent), Jim Young (co-founder of Hot Or Not), and Paul Bragiel (co-founder of Lefora). i/o Ventures provides seed money, advice, and connections during a 6-month program conducted at company's San Francisco Mission District office. The fund receives 8% of the company's common stock on average. i/o Ventures typically invests $25,000 in its startups.

i/o Ventures emphasizes its mentorship on its website and the availability of experienced entrepreneurs to its startups. Its roster of well-known mentors includes:

Aaron Patzer, founder and CEO of Mint.com

Chris DeWolfe, co-founder and CEO of MySpace

Darcy Antonellis, CTO of Warner Bros.

David Ulevitch, founder and CEO of OpenDNS

David Weekly, founder of SuperHappyDevHouse, HackerDojo, PBworks

Jameson Hsu, founder and CEO of Mochi Media

Jawed Karim, co-founder of YouTube

Kevin Rose, founder of Digg

Mike Arrington, founder and CEO of TechCrunch

Philip J. Kaplan, co-founder of AdBrite, Blippy

Richard Yoo, co-founder and former CEO of Rackspace

Maryse Thomas, founder and CEO of Pokeware

Russel Simmons, co-founder and CTO of Yelp, Inc.

Ted Rheingold, founder and CEO of Dogster, Inc.