Meebo Raises $3.5M

[Jeff]

Tiny startup Meebo -- barely 14 weeks after launching and with only 250,000 logins -- has secured $3.5 million from venture capital firm Sequoia Capital in it's first round of funding. Co-founded by (now former) Stanford Business School student Seth Sternberg and fellow Stanford engineering grads Elaine Wherry and Sandy Jen, Meebo is an AJAX-powered, web-based multi-protocol instant messaging service.

Why should you care about Meebo? It's a great way to sign-on to your IM programs, even behind a corporate firewall (at least until corporate IT types catch on and find a way to block Meebo, too). Without downloading or installing anything, Meebo lets you connect to AIM or ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger and Jabber or Google Talk.

Up to now, the team of three has been running the whole show. This seed funding will allow them to expand infrastructure to support growth and hire some additional engineers. Hopefully they'll be able to sleep better at night and maybe take more than just one day off.