Index and Kutcher invest in Flipboard tech venture

Flipboard is "a cool new company that launched a new social magazine" according to @IndexVentures, the Twitter account of one of the leading European venture capital (VC) firms.

"Flipboard provides the best professional content and social content to readers in a totally customized way. This will end up being the way you start your day along with your cup of coffee," said Index partner, Danny Rimer, who will sit on the board of the new company.

Geneva-based Index Ventures is one of several VC firms pumping cash into Flipboard, Inc., the Palo Alto, California company that launched its social media story aggregator on Wednesday.

The new venture has also attracted investment from Hollywood star Ashton Kutcher, who previously invested in social media companies Twitter and Foursquare.

Founded by Mike McCue, former CEO of Tellme, and Evan Doll, ex-senior iPhone engineer at Apple, Flipboard aims to transform how people discover and share content from social media.

The company describes its product as "a social magazine that brings to life the stories, photos, news and updates being shared across Twitter and Facebook."

Facebook hit 500 million users this month and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has already predicted his site will reach a billion followers.

But the introduction of Flipboard suggests many people occupied by social media have been missing the feeling of flicking through a print magazine.

Users can pre-select a list of 'friends' and trusted sources, receiving their status updates, musings and news in a magazine-style format specifically designed for use on Apple’s iPad.

A corporate demonstration video shows how the user swipes a finger across the screen of an iPad to 'turn pages': Flipboard demo.

"Social media today is characterized by endless lists of text updates and links that people have to scroll through and click on to actually see any detail," said McCue in a statement.

"We believe the timeless principles of print can make social media less noisy, more visually compelling and ultimately more mainstream," said the CEO.

Index partner Danny Rimer will be working very closely with the company, said the Geneva firm, which found cash for the investment from its 'early stage fund', Index Ventures V, that closed in March 2009.

A raft of other investors have also bought stakes in Flipboard.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), a VC firm of which former US vice president, Al Gore, is a partner, has also injected part of the 10 million dollar combined investment. KPCB previously invested in Google and Netscape.

Several 'Angel investors' make up the group financing Flipboard next growth stage.

Kutcher, the husband of Demi Moore and star of Dude Where’s My Car?, brings profile as well as cash to the venture.

It is the first time Index has invested in the same company as Kutcher.

Other 'Angels' include Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, Facebook co-founder, Dustin Moskovitz and former Newscorp. president, Peter Chernin.

With such a broad range of wealth and expertise behind Flipboard the company is expected to grow rapidly.

It has already bought another business, Ellerdale, which has a world-class engineering team, including Arthur van Hoff, a leading Silicon Valley technologist who played a major role in the creation of Java.

Van Hoff will become Flipboard’s chief technology officer and spearhead the company’s technology strategy.

The magazine format has already attracted praise.

"It’s a complete game changer for presenting social media content," said World Economic Forum managing director, Adrian Monck, who sits on the forum’s global agenda council on the future of the media.

"If you look at the interface and compare it with paid and gated apps – again it puts them right in the shade," said Monck.

Flipboard is downloadable for free at Apple’s App Store or at www.flipboard.com.

Apple Inc. announced in a results statement on Tuesday that it shifted 3.27 million iPads in the last quarterly period beginning April 1.

"The bar has been well and truly raised for content presentation on the iPad," said Monck.