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<\/a>Factual, an online data management company, was founded last fall by Gil Elbaz, whose previous company, Applied Semantics, was bought by Google as core technology to the search engine’s unique AdSense ad-serving system.<\/p>\nVentureBeat has obtained the text of a blog post by Elbaz going up later today at the Factual Blog<\/a>, in which Elbaz will announce seed funding that includes two big-idea funders, Andreessen Horowitz and Idealab.<\/p>\n Here’s the post in full:<\/p>\n Hi all, I wanted to give you an update on the business side of Factual and some exciting new developments.<\/p>\n Since our launch in October 2009, we\u2019ve been very busy at our offices in Los Angeles and Shanghai — expanding the company, fine-tuning the product, launching new features, and learning from our ever-growing community. Factual tables are already demonstrating the power and usefulness of our large-scale open data platform. For example, Creative Commons tweeted about the 4 million record website data table which showed who is using CC licenses.<\/p>\n After we launched Factual, I set out to garner support from a targeted list of industry luminaries who believe in Factual’s mission to build a powerful open data platform used and supported by an enthusiastic community. And today, I\u2019m very happy to announce that we’ve attracted a group of early-stage investors that will guide us as we work to refine our product, hire exceptional employees, and tackle exciting new markets.<\/p>\n Our investors are an A-list group of accomplished internet and media pioneers. They include: We are looking forward to working with this astute group of advisors and gleaning their insights. Of course, this means that the Factual team will be working twice as hard in 2010 — to not only meet and exceed the expectations of our investors, but to achieve our goal of bringing greater transparency, accuracy and openness to data. One of my resolutions this year is to tweet and blog more, so you should be hearing from me on a regular basis.<\/p>\n Thanks again to our group of investors. Let’s make 2010 the year of “open”!<\/p>\n Factually yours,\n
<\/a>Gil’s Corner: An Update From Gil<\/p>\n
\nFirst off, Happy New Year! (A little late for that, I know… but better late than never).<\/p>\n
\nAndreessen Horowitz – Founders, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz
\nBill Gross – Founder\/Chairman, Idealab
\nDanny Rimer – Index Ventures
\nEsther Dyson – Founder, EDventure Holdings
\nFounder Collective
\nGunderson Dettmer
\nLee and June Stein
\nM\u00e5rten Mickos, former CEO of MySQL
\nMiramar Venture Partners
\nRichard Rosenblatt – CEO, Demand Media
\nScott Kurnit – Founder, About.com
\nThomas Lehrman – Founder, Gerson Lehrman Group
\nTom Unterman – Founder, Rustic Canyon Ventures<\/p>\n
\nGil<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n