Peerlyst Raises $3 Million Series Seed to innovate social networking platform custom built for IT, security professionals.

Peerlyst is the next generation in professional social networking, evolving social connections to leverage the power of dedicated, highly specialized communities

Peerlyst, the dedicated social community for IT, announced today that it has secured $3 million USD series seed to continue its mission of innovating professional social networks. This round was led by Hummer Winblad Venture Partners (HWVP) with additional funding from Illuminate Ventures.

Currently in beta, Peerlyst is redefining professional networking by creating a community of highly specialized IT professionals and information security officers seeking a dedicated forum to address day-to-day challenges, emerging threats and the latest software.

'We invested in Peerlyst because it is tackling a critical need for the IT community to easily connect and collaborate in a way that is in context, meaningful and productive,' said Mitchell Kertzman, managing director at HWVP. 'An unintended result of the outdated social platforms on the market today is that most IT professionals simply don't use them other than for career building. Peerlyst changes all of that with a simple and sophisticated solution that is focused on their sector.'

'Current social platforms are a great way to connect on a professional level, recruit and find a job,' said Limor Elbaz, CEO and founder, 'But Peerlyst is focusing on facilitating collaboration at a highly specialized level that is currently not happening in the market today.'

What is Peerlyst?
Peerlyst is a community of information security experts, pioneering the next phase of professional social networking. By creating a dedicated, highly specialized community, its members not only simply connect, but engage in quality collaboration through content creation, software reviews, discussions and insights.

'Our platform leverages powerful NLP and Machine Learning technologies to deliver easy access to timely, accurate and organized information about specific products, vendors and emerging trends in the IT field our members care about,' Elbaz explained.

Thousands of individuals responsible for safeguarding digital networks of all sizes have joined Peerlyst to stay atop the latest software, identify and prevent threats and expand their professional networks. Peerlyst invites the professional IT community to join their Peers now.

Why Peerlyst?
CIOs, CISOs and IT managers lack time and resources to benchmark every product and struggle to find reviews and insights of real-world product implementation beyond analyst opinions, vendor sponsored white papers and magazine reviews, especially in emerging technology.

Peerlyst saves technology management resources by streamlining the process of identifying and comparing software alternatives. Peerlyst combines familiar social networking features with proprietary technologies to bring the information needed to make product selections and to share implementation expertise.

'Peerlyst gives you powerful search of any technology, company or person, so you can dig into factual data as well as community sentiment about a product or company on the web,' said Caroline McCrory, a PowerPeer„¢ on Peerlyst and also a Sr. Director of Research at Gigaom. 'It gathers this information from thousands of sources and presents it in a well organized, intuitive format that anyone can read and understand. Brilliant.'

How we do IT
By following products, companies or people, Peerlyst provides a feed of updates, including verified product reviews, discussions, news, vendor announcements and user posts. Users contribute their experience and knowledge to the community by reviewing products, participating in discussions, asking and answering questions, and connecting with other IT peers across titles, industry and geography.

Sign up today
Find out how Peerlyst facilitates high-quality collaboration by providing means for its users to create content, share reviews, projects, discussions and insights, without jeopardizing their identity or mining personal data for online ads. We create a trusted professional environment that makes our users job easier by delivering relevance that other leading social networks like LinkedIn cannot support.

Peerlyst members from Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies have recognized the significant advantages of being part of this community. Information security must evolve at the speed of tech innovation and Peerlyst is helping its members keep up. Sign up and review a product, write a tip for other users, ask the Peerlyst community a question, or start a discussion ' that's all it takes to help build a knowledge base the tech community can rely on.

About Hummer Winblad
Hummer Winblad Venture Partners is a premiere venture capital fund exclusively focused on software and Internet investing since 1989. Previous investments include Powersoft Corporation, Wind River Systems and Arbor Software, as well as Internet companies Net Perceptions, AdForce, Employease and Omniture. For further information, please visit http://www.humwin.com.

About Illuminate Ventures
Illuminate Ventures is led by a team of experienced investors with significant prior track records of entrepreneurial success. As an early investor, our goal is to enable the vision of great entrepreneurs. We focus on enterprise cloud and mobile computing startups that deliver improved business performance, but don't rely on 'pattern recognition' or following the herd. We seek innovative business ideas led by talented founding teams with diverse perspectives that allow them to marry creative destruction with new technologies ' solving old problems in new ways. Illuminate benefits from a world-class Business Advisory Council of 40+ successful high-tech founders, corporate executives and industry veterans who work closely with our portfolio companies. Learn more about our portfolio and perspective at http://www.illuminate.com and follow us @IlluminateVC.

About Peerlyst
Peerlyst is a trusted peer network for sharing unbiased first-hand reviews and insights on enterprise technology products. Decision makers can efficiently discover and compare product information, see user reviews, and connect with their peers around the products important to their business. Peerlyst captures and organizes product information from more than a thousand vendors, and uses familiar social and community features so that decision makers can benefit from their peers' experience. See more at http://www.peerlyst.com.