Doug Imbruce

Early Life & Background

Douglas was born and raised in Westport, Connecticut. In 2005, Imbruce earned a B.A. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. During his time at Columbia, Imbruce founded TheU, an educational content network that helped over a million students per year select and pursue higher education, which was later acquired by a private equity firm.

Qwiki

In early 2009, Imbruce developed the first prototype of Qwiki, a technology that transforms raw data into a rich-media, interactive information experience. Imbruce then presented the idea to multiple investors in Manhattan and met Bobby Yazdani, Qwiki’s seed investor. Yazdani advised Imbruce to move to Silicon Valley and introduced him to Louis Monier, the founder of AltaVista, the first all-Web search engine. Monier became the co-founder and CTO of Qwiki and he and Imbruce began putting together a technical team to develop the Qwiki platform. In September 2010, they launched Qwiki at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco where they participated in the Startup Battlefield. On September 27, 2010, they were awarded the “Disrupt Cup” and a $50,000 grand prize. On October 22, 2010, Qwiki launched its private alpha.

In January 2011, Qwiki raised $8 million in Series A financing, a round that was led primarily by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin. Other investors included Jawed Karim (co-founder, YouTube) and Pradeep Sindhu (co-founder, Juniper Networks). Institutional investors included Lerer Media Ventures, Tugboat Ventures and Contour Venture Partners. On January 24, 2011, Qwiki launched its public alpha live on CNN.

In March 2011, Qwiki raised an additional $1 million from Groupon and Lightbank co-founders Brad Keywell and Eric Lefkofsky, bringing the total raised to date to $10.5 million.

On April 20, 2011, Qwiki launched its second product, Qwiki App for the iPad. Seven weeks after launch, the Qwiki App was downloaded over 500,000 times.

In May 2012, Qwiki launched a new platform for bloggers and online publishers including a partnership with ABC News. The television network is using Qwiki technology on ABCNews.com and GoodMorningAmerica.com.

In June 2012, Bing announced that it would display Qwiki videos on Bing search pages just below Wikipedia. and that users would be able to play Qwikis without leaving their search. Qwiki also planned to allow bloggers and individuals to create their own "Qwikis."

In February 2013, Qwiki for iPhone launched on the App Store as Editors' Choice. The app was downloaded more than 125K times in the first 6 days after launch, ultimately achieving over 1,000,000 downloads.

In May 2013, Time Inc. named Qwiki one of 10 NYC Startups to Watch for 2013.

Qwiki was acquired by Yahoo! on July 2, 2013.