Apture helps media, one link at a time

In this episode our Behind the Money online video show, Tristan Harris, co-founder and CEO of Apture Inc., tells The Deal how informal chats with fellow students at Stanford University, who happened to be world-class journalists, led to the birth of his San Mateo, Calif., startup. Apture, which has developed a clever technique for adding relevant links to Web pages and has attracted an impressive roster of customers, including the Washington Post Co., Reuters and the BBC, recently raised a $4.1 million Series A round led by early-stage venture capital firm Clearstone Venture Partners. Harris was introduced to the partners at Clearstone by JT Batson, head of business development for the Rubicon Project, a Los Angeles startup in Clearstone's portfolio. Click here for a Q&A with Clearstone partner David Stern on why the firm is backing Apture. The startup was seeded in the summer of 2007 with $500,000 from individual investors, including VMware Inc. (NYSE:VMW) CEO Paul Martiz, former Boston Globe executive vice president Steve Taylor and former Warburg Pincus managing director Beau Vrolyk. (The Deal Pipeline subscribers can learn more about Apture and its funding here.) In the video, Tristan (pictured) says that Apture was hatched over informal conversations with Pam Maples, assistant managing editor of The Dallas Morning News, and Martin Turner, Americas bureau chief of the British Broadcasting Corp., both of whom were Stanford University Knight Fellows in 2006 when Harris was a Mayfield Fellow with the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. Watch the video below or download it on iTunes.