Garrett Camp, co-founder of both StumbleUpon and Uber, is looking for help in funding his new company-building venture Expa. According to an SEC filing, Camp is looking to raise up to $75 million to bring about a portfolio of innovative new ideas.
When Camp first announced his plans for Expa last May, he told my boss Alexia that the holding company would be structured much like similar ventures from entrepreneurs Max Levchin (HVF), Evan Williams (Obvious), Michael Birch (Monkey Inferno), and Ron Palmeri (MkII). That follows a larger trend of company-building entrepreneurs backing technology studios that help to create and fund a series of ambitious new projects at once.
Camp always seemed more comfortable in the role of building early-stage companies, where he can act as a product visionary, rather than in the later stages of building and scaling a business, where operational expertise is key. Before he got to this point, he helped found content discovery platform StumbleUpon, which he sold to eBay for $75 million and later bought back, as well as Uber, which he co-founded along with now-CEO Travis Kalanick.
That said, not everything Camp has worked on has been a success: Last year, he made a push behind BlackJet, which was billed as the “Uber for Private Jets” — yes, even by TechCrunch. That idea has failed to “take off” (get it?!), and BlackJet, which was once listed as part of the Expa portfolio, is now noticeably missing.
So what’s next for Expa? It’s not clear, but knowing Camp he probably has a whole bunch of ideas that are already being worked on. We’ve reached out to him to catch up on Expa, and will let you know if we hear back.
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