Marissa Mayer’s New Startup Dazzle Raises $8M Led by Forerunner’s Kirsten Green

Marissa Mayer, the former Yahoo CEO, is not sitting on the sidelines of the generative AI revolution. After spending six years running Sunshine, a photo-sharing and contact-management startup that struggled to gain traction, Mayer has shuttered the company and launched Dazzle, a new startup focused on creating the next generation of AI personal assistants.

While Mayer has not shared specific details about Dazzle's functionality, she revealed that the company has raised $8 million in a seed round at a $35 million valuation. The round was led by Kirsten Green of Forerunner Ventures, with participation from Kleiner Perkins, Greycroft, Offline Ventures, Slow Ventures, and Bling Capital. Although Mayer has admitted to investing her own money in the startup, she emphasized that Green's role as lead investor carries significant weight. Green is known for identifying iconic consumer brands such as Warby Parker, Chime, and Dollar Shave Club.

Green's investment signals that Dazzle is primed for the upcoming wave of consumer-facing AI businesses. Green previously told TechCrunch that while enterprise AI was the early leader in this tech cycle, consumer-facing AI is now a "late bloomer" that's ready for its breakout.

For a founder with Mayer's fame, landing Green as a lead investor is a significant stamp of credibility, especially given the widely considered failure of Sunshine. "I think she really has a great sense for where people and platforms are going," Mayer said about Green.

Mayer told TechCrunch that the Sunshine team began prototyping Dazzle last summer, and the project quickly surpassed their previous work in both ambition and opportunity. "We realized that this was something that we were much more excited about," Mayer said, adding that Dazzle has the potential for "a much bigger impact" than what Sunshine was building.

Sunshine, founded initially as Lumi Labs in 2018, launched a subscription-based management app called "Sunshine Contacts." Despite Mayer's high profile, the app struggled to gain traction. Privacy advocates raised concerns about the app's practice of pulling home addresses from public databases to enrich contact lists, and the company never recovered from initial scepticism. By 2024, the company had expanded its offerings to include event management and "Shine," an AI-powered photo-sharing tool. However, this new offering faced criticism for its outdated design and failed to attract widespread usage.

Sunshine raised a total of $20 million from investors such as Felicis, Norwest Venture Partners, and Unusual Ventures. When the company was dissolved, investors received 10% of Dazzle's equity, according to Mayer.

Reflecting on Sunshine's struggles, Mayer acknowledged the company's limitations, noting that the problems they were tackling were too "mundane" and not large enough to make a significant impact. "I don't think we got it to the state of overall polish and accessibility that I really wanted it to be," she said.

Now, Mayer is betting that the lessons learned from Sunshine will help her build a more resilient and impactful business with Dazzle.

Before her tenure as Yahoo CEO, Mayer was employee number 20 at Google, where she helped design Google's search look and feel and oversaw the development of Google Maps and AdWords.

"I have had the rare privilege of being at two companies that really changed how people do things," Mayer said in an interview with TechCrunch. "Yahoo, for many, defined the internet. Google, in terms of Search and Maps, changed everything. I really aspire to build a product that has that kind of impact again."

Dazzle is expected to exit stealth early next year.