Jul 12, 2012

Posted Disruptive: uBeam Lands $750K To Let You Charge Gadgets Without Plugs Seems it’s not time to throw out those business cards just yet. Hashable , the startup that launched back in fall 2010 with the aim of replacing business cards with mobile and web apps that helped people meet and exchange information, is shutting down its service. The company announced the move via an email to users sent this evening. The company, based in New York City, had raised some $4 million in funding. The folks who founded Hashable are in the process of working together on another product. According to Tweets sent by Hashable founder Michael Yavonditte today, the new entity is in the mobile ads space: We're building a very unique mobile ad system — one that honors both publishers and advertisers, back to world we know better than most — Michael Yavonditte (@mikeyavo) July 12, 2012 we simply couldn't make Hashable good enough / we know we can build a world-class mobile ad system / back to area of expertise — Michael Yavonditte (@mikeyavo) July 12, 2012 It’s unclear how much of the current Hashable team is staying on for the new effort — whether this counts as a “pivot” or a whole new company. UPDATE: Yavonditte tells us via email that the mobile ads effort is not a Hashable pivot — it’s a new company altogether. The “returning to his roots” refers to Yavonditte’s experience as the CEO of Quigo , an ad-targeting startup that sold to AOL for a reported $340 million back in 2007. Here is the email Hashable sent to users: Dear Hashable Users, We regret to inform you that the Hashable mobile apps and Hashable.com will be shutting down on July 25th. The service will be unavailable after this date. While we are still very passionate about making better connections and meeting new people, the time has come for us to focus our energy elsewhere. Some of you have stored valuable information in Hashable, and we want to give you the opportunity to save that data for your own records. If you’d like to receive a file with your complete history, please log onto Hashable.com, navigate to the “Profile” tab, then to the “Your History” section on that page. You can download the file by clicking “Export full history to .csv” and accepting the dialog that pops up. We are incredibly grateful for all the people we have met through Hashable. Thank you for all your support, and we hope to connect with you again in the future. All the best,