News aggregator turned e-commerce and discussion portal Deja.com Inc. Tuesday secured $12.5 million
in capital from existing investors.
Austin Ventures, Chase H&Q, Comcast, GE Capital, Internet Capital Group ,
Prime New Media Ventures and ZDNet all participated in the latest round.
Formerly called Deja News, the firm originally featured archived postings to Usenet discussion groups. As
Deja.com, the venture has evolved into a buyer’s portal that helps consumers
decide what products to buy and where to buy them.
Deja.com also modified its existing ratings and reviews services to features
product specifications, professional product reviews from industry-leading
content providers, and proprietary, state-of-the-art technologies, such as
search and comparison tools and a precise and informative price and
availability comparison tool.
The company’s Usenet discussion
service provides fast access to approximately 35,000 Usenet and
proprietary discussion forums. The company also operates Deja Business
Solutions, which licenses Deja’s proprietary content and technologies to
businesses.
The investment comes a little more than two weeks since the company canceled
its plans to go public, citing adverse market conditions. In truth, the firm
also acknowledged that changing its business model was another factor in
ditching the IPO.
Richard Gorelick, the company’s chief strategy officer, said the Securities
and Exchange Commission sent Deja.com a letter telling the company its
notice of intent to go public had been on file too long, and that it would
have to be withdrawn. Gorelick also said the firm’s decision to go public
was premature because of the fine tuning that was taking place a year ago.