Brad Feld

Back to Blog

Amazon Acquires Shelfari

Aug 27, 2008
Category Investments

Congrats to Josh Hug and the gang at Shelfari for joining the Amazon.com family.  I was an early angel investor in Shelfari and have been a long time avid user of the service.  Amazon was an investor in the first round and the two companies fit naturally together.

I invested in three vertical social networks in 2006 – Shelfari (books), Dogster (dogs and cats), and Enthusiast Group (sports).  So far I have one win (Shelfari) and one loss (Enthusiast Group).  Dogster is doing great and looks like it’ll be a nice winner also.  I made these as small angel investments to learn about the dynamics around vertical social networks.  I’ve learned a bunch from Josh and from Ted Rheingold at Dogster.  It also looks like I’ll have a nice "aggregate financial outcome" for my investments in this area.

Well done Shelfari!