TechCrunch has the news, Y Combinator's Hacker News has the insight --
Rap Genius Raises $40M, Changes Name To Genius [genius.com], Launches Embeddable Annotations | TechCrunch: "Rap Genius made three big moves today to further its goal to annotate the world. The founders tell me it’s raised a $40 million Series B led by Dan Gilbert and joined by previous investor Andreessen Horowitz at a valuation under $1 billion. It also changed its name to Genius.com and is launching embeddable annotations so any website can hover over text and see explanations and background info on what that text means. You can see a demo run of the embeds on Business Insider’s deep dive into the company. Genius‘ big new investor Gilbert is the founder and chairman of Rock Ventures and Quicken Loans, plus the majority owner of the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers. He’s know to many as a champion of Detroit’s rebirth. The new funding brings Genius to $56.8 million in total, which it plans to spend hiring engineers, designers, and community leaders. The new Genius name will make it more accessible and intelligible to communities reading and writing annotations outside of rap...." (read more at the link above)
I wonder how much it cost them to get the domain name. | Hacker News: "I wonder how much it cost them to get the domain name... Probably under $100k... Location location location, am I right? Even if it was more, that's your brand. As we've seen that search engines can make or break you, this is one of the few things you can control... I'd be very surprised if 100k did the job. I would bet under $500k though. Still worth it..."
"Still worth it" say the innovators, founders, and venture capitalists -- for a dot Com domain name!
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