User:Rahul.kishore/Center'd

Center'd is a privately held startup with headquarters in Menlo Park, California. The company's website went live in June of 2008. Center'd focuses on event planning and local search. Their flagship product allows for users to search for places and events based upon “intent style” searches. Center'd's search engine is designed to understand specialized terms including kid-friendly, romantic, and outdoor, among others

Founding
Center'd was founded by Jennifer Dulski and Chandu Thota. The company's original technology came from Fatdoor, a company founded by Thota that found minor success. Dulski came to Center'd after being the General Manager of Yahoo Local. Center'd has many of the localized features that made Yahoo Local and Fatdoor popular. The company's original focus was on event planning. The site went public in June of 2008.

Funding
Center'd has raised $7 Million in capital since its founding. Its Series A round totaled $5.5 Million from Norwest Ventures and Keynote Ventures in October 2007. The company also received $1 Million in angel funding from Bill Harris and Jeff Drazen in February of 2007.

"Flavored" Local Search
Center'd introduced a new product in April 2009, hailed as "flavored" local search. This new style of search is based in Natural Language Processing, allowing Center'd to compile an index of all the conversations about places and events on the web. Center'd uses semantic analysis to come up with better search results than similar search engines. According to Jennifer Dulski, CEO of Center'd,"Consumers want a faster way to find local activities that meet their needs without having to visit multiple sites and sift through hundreds of reviews. Our unique activity index and personal planning features help solve this problem and complement our existing group collaboration tools". Center'd has created a database of over 1 million entries related to places and activities, each of which has been categorized using intent-based classification.

City Pages
In addition to rolling out their new "flavored" search product, Center'd began to introduce city centric pages in 2009. These pages are designed to guide users towards different "intent style" activities in featured cities, such as kid friendly, outdoors, romantic, recession buster, group friendly, outdoors and popular. The pages also feature editorial content from local bloggers.

In the Media
Center'd has been covered by many social media and tech industry blogs and publications.

Quotations

"It lets you connect to people through places, such as schools, stores, or museums. Social+local. Isn't that the original definition of community?"

-TechCrunch

"...a meeting with its founders today left me thinking it has potential to become something big."

-Venture Beat

"Center'd, with its friendly winking apostrophe, seems an apt name for a start-up with the ambitious goal of becoming the go-to Web site for 'local planning.' Center'd reprsents a twist on a powerful business trend."

-MercuryNews.com

"So if you've got something to plan this summer — whether a family reunion, birthday bash, or mom's night out — give Center'd a try."

-Real Simple

"There are other events-focused sites out there, but the addition of Yelp-like local search, Evite-like invitations and social networking a la Facebook could set Center'd apart."

-Springwise.com

"Center'd has taken a category that is filled with 'me too' sites and created something new by taking a very user-centric and practical approach."

-Screenwerk