You heard me, Ark raised $4.2 million from 14 VC's:

Less than a month after Demo Day, Ark now tells me that it has raised a $4.2 million seed round from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Charles River Ventures, Greylock Partners, Intel Capital, SV Angel, Atlas Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Expansion Venture Capital, Felicis Ventures, Lightbank, Salesforce, Tencent, Transmedia Capital, and a bunch of individual angel investors.

Maybe Spock was the right idea, too early?

Still, 14 VC's in a seed round. That's gotta be a record.

And why a seed stage company needs 16 employees is beyond me, too.

@lizgannes says @paulg is not sure if $4.2 million is the biggest seed round ever.

It certainly seems huge.

They say the reason they took so much money is to "keep total control".

Founder Patrick Riley repeated, "If I could keep complete control of the company, why not?"

For more, see: http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/21/after-walking-away-from-acquisition-talks-with-facebook-ark-opens-its-people-search-engine/

For some reason Ark didn't make the list of 12 startups everyone is talking about.

Not sure why.

How did Ark get in front of the VC's to begin with? We are planning a release soon and hope to secure seed funding for our idea but I am the designer, founder, and creative talent behind my company with minimal business skills. Any help?

Hi Tony! Ark got in front of the VC's by going through YCombinator.

So... apply to YCombinator?