Kevin Rose has stepped away from his role as an investor at Google Ventures to work full-time on his mobile app development startup North Technologies, which just raised $5 million in funding led by True Ventures.
North Technologies is an incubator for mobile and social apps that has so far launched two products, ephemeral photo-sharing app Tiiny and Watchville, an app for luxury watch aficionados. Rose said in an email this week that Watchville in particular is seeing “tremendous growth,” with more than 2.2 million screenloads and more than 750,000 sessions since its launch six weeks ago.
When North officially launched in August 2014, Rose downgraded his role at Google Ventures from full-time to part-time. Now that North has raised a hearty $5 million in seed funding, Rose is stepping away from investing at Google Ventures entirely, though he will continue to serve as an advisor to the fund.
The $5 million seed round boasts an assortment of bold-faced names from the tech investment world and beyond: Participating along with True Ventures were Google Ventures, Greylock Partners, Redpoint Ventures, SV Angel, Sherpa Ventures, Lowercase Capital, Floodgate Capital, Slow Ventures, Susa Ventures, A-Grade, Melo7, Vayner, and the Launch Fund, along with angel investors Bobby Goodlatte, Tim Ferriss, Anthony Casalena, Naval Ravikant, Vinny Lingham, Philip Kaplan, Ev Williams, Mike Shinoda, and Tony Hawk.