Since then, we’ve received little else to go on. The project’s focus continues to be shrouded in secrecy, and we really only know that it will be primarily mobile-based, free, and won’t be ready for quite a while. In the meantime, Biz Stone has been revealing team members – including former Twitter employee Ben Finkel (co-founder and CTO), Twitter’s Kevin Thau (COO), and employee #1, designer Austin Sarner.

Today, in a blog post, Stone has announced that Jelly has just closed its Series A funding, lead by Spark Capital with investment from SV Angel. With that, Spark General Partner Bijan Sabet in now on Jelly’s Board of Directors.

Stone has also revealed some of Jelly’s early investors, and it’s an interesting list:

• Jack Dorsey, Co-founder and CEO of Square
• Bono, Musician and Activist
• Reid Hoffman with the Greylock Discovery Fund
• Steven Johnson, Author and Entrepreneur
• Evan Williams and Jason Goldman via Obvious
• Al Gore, Politician, Philanthropist, Nobel Laureate
• Greg Yaitanes, Emmy Winning Director
• Roya Mahboob, Afghan Entrepreneur and Businesswoman

Dorsey and Evan Williams – duh. But Bono and Al Gore? Hmm.

“We chose angels like Al Gore, a Partner at KPCB and Chairman and Co-founder of Generation Investment Management, Greg Yaitanes, a Hollywood director, and Roya Mahboob, an entrepreneur doing amazing work for women in Afghanistan partly because they work in divergent fields. Knowledge diversity is something we prize highly and is also something that will be represented in our product,” says Stone.

When Jelly was first officially announced, Stone said this:

People are basically good – when provided a tool that helps them do good in the world, they prove it. Jelly is a new company and product named after the jellyfish. We are inspired by this particular animal because neurologically, its brain is more “we” than “me.” Also, for the past 700 million years, this decentralized structure has been wildly successful.

“Help them do good in the world.” Is that the key phrase here? Is Jelly some sort of mobile social good app? Who knows, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see, as Stone is quite serious about keeping a tight lid on this thing. But the addition of Bono, Al Gore, and an Afghani activist hints that Jelly will be striving to do some sort of international good at the very least.

According to Jelly founder and CEO, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, the company has just hired employee #1: UI designer and engineer Austin Sarner. Sarner, who got his start building Mac OS apps, worked on the Push Pop Press publishing platform that won a Apple Design Award in 2011.

Here’s Biz Stone’s welcome letter:

Jelly is thrilled to announce our official employee #1, Austin Sarner. Austin was instrumental in developing Push Pop Press, the Apple Design Award winning multi-touch user interface and publishing platform. Austin has been busy building rich software user interfaces for the past eight years.

Austin got his start creating popular shareware applications for Mac OS such as AppZapper and Disco, and spent some time working in Amsterdam with the Dutch Software company Sofa. Pushing the envelope in software design brought Austin some success in this field and helped him discover his true passion.

Clarity for Austin came in the form of understanding that software development is an effective path towards facilitating large scale positive change. Following its sale to Facebook, Austin parted ways with Push Pop Press in search of an opportunity to collaborate with like-minded individuals on something new.

We were lucky to have met Austin via a recommendation from Loren Brichter, a very highly regarded iOS developer. When someone like Loren highlights talent, we take it seriously. In Austin, Jelly has found not only a gifted engineer with an eye for interaction design, but an individual who shares our world positive philosophy.

Although this is technically employee #1, Jelly has also made some additions to the executive team. Biz Stone revealed ex-Twitter employee Ben Finkel as co-founder and Chief Technology Officer last week, and a few days later we heard that Jelly has poached Twitter Music head Kevin Thau to be the company’s COO. Although Biz Stone has yet to confirm that one.

All we really know about Jelly at this point is that it will be a mobile-focused free service of some kind.

“News of Jelly emerged unexpectedly early so I’ll wait a bit to share more about the team. In the meantime, I’ll say this. Jelly will be for everybody, it will be developed first and foremost for mobile devices, and it will be free. But, it won’t be ready for a while,” said Stone, when announcing the startup.

With this hire, it looks like they’re starting to consider what the user experience on the app will look and feel like.

The company is readying a mobile product aimed at inspiring “digital creativity in parents and children with physical products that surprise.” Basically, it will focus on family-oriented crafts and DIY. Frye is serving as Chief Creative Officer. Former IAC exec Kara Nortman is CE.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s sister Randi Zuckerberg is serving as an advisor, along with Dan Rosensweig, Tim Ferriss, Gina Bianchini, Erik Lammerding and Rick Marini.

The startup builds on the Moonfrye.com online community launched a few years ago. It already has 1.5 million Twitter followers and 500,000 Facebook likes.

“As my most important role in life is being a mom, it was clear to me that parents around the world were looking for cost effective activities where their families could come together and create meaningful experiences both online and off,” said Soleil Moon Frye.

“Our product has a unique, innovative design that is going to be a game-changer for providing parents and children with a shared creative outlet,” said Nortman. “If moms are shutting off passive entertainment in favor of engaging their kids actively on mobile devices then we have made our small dent on society.”

“There’s a restored interest in craftsmanship and DIY. It’s a refreshing change from the reliance on ready-made goods,” said Kevin Rose, General Partner at Google Ventures. “Combining real world experiences with digital tools creates a lot of interesting possibilities when put in the hands of moms and families, and Soleil and Kara have an inspiring vision to bring that to life.”

Those interested can sign up for early access to the app.

Chris DiBona, Director of Open Source at Google, is interviewed by Don Dodge about how your startup should use open source software. It’s a given that you should use open source and perhaps contribute as well, but there are tricks to doing it correctly, so that you can scale, so you don’t run into legal trouble and so that you can be acquired.

Today, Stone has revealed the identity of the mobile-oriented startup’s co-founder and CTO: Ben Finkel, founder of Fluther and New Users Experience manager on Twitter’s Growth Team. Finkel’s Fluther, a Q&A app, was acquired by Twitter back in 2010.

“Ben Finkel is my co-founder here at Jelly. Ben and I have been friends and collaborators for many years. During one of our frequent walk-and-talks around San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Park, we accidentally came up with the idea for Jelly. It was one of those ideas that we couldn’t get out of our heads,” says Stone on a post on the JellyHQ blog.

What that idea is remains opaque. Reports that Stone was working on Jelly emerged late last month, and Stone confirmed it earlier this month.

“News of Jelly emerged unexpectedly early so I’ll wait a bit to share more about the team. In the meantime, I’ll say this. Jelly will be for everybody, it will be developed first and foremost for mobile devices, and it will be free. But, it won’t be ready for a while,” said Stone, when announcing the startup.

Little else is known about Jelly, except that it will be a mobile-based, free service of some kind.

“Ben will serve as Jelly’s CTO, focusing on shipping fantastic products, attracting world class engineers, and in general, running a tight technical ship. We’re putting together a core “dream team” at the moment. Next, we’ll be heads-down on developing Jelly—the idea that we couldn’t get out of our heads.”

Introducing my Co-Founder at Jelly, Ben Finkel jellyhq.com/post/486162989…

— Biz Stone (@biz) April 22, 2013

In a post at JellyHQ.com, Stone writes:

People are basically good—when provided a tool that helps them do good in the world, they prove it.

Jelly is a new company and product named after the jellyfish. We are inspired by this particular animal because neurologically, its brain is more “we” than “me.” Also, for the past 700 million years, this decentralized structure has been wildly successful.

News of Jelly emerged unexpectedly early so I’ll wait a bit to share more about the team. In the meantime, I’ll say this. Jelly will be for everybody, it will be developed first and foremost for mobile devices, and it will be free. But, it won’t be ready for a while.

Personally, Jelly will command my full attention aside from some advisory roles elsewhere. The company is self-funded for now. Our offices are based in San Francisco. We are hiring, but Jelly is in no rush to be a big company any time soon.

According to Kara Swisher, a source referred to Jelly as a “native mobile” effort, and Stone has already hired four or five employees.

Presumably this is independent from Obvious, which Stone also co-founded, and is working on things like Medium, Lift and Branch.

According to Kara Swisher at All Things D, Stone’s new project is called “Jelly,” which her source called a “native mobile” effort.

That’s pretty vague, and the only other tidbit provided was that the product will likely “be aimed and smartphones and tablets.”

Apparently, Stone has already hired four or five employees to work on Jelly.

In 2011, after leaving his day-to-day role at Twitter, Stone put his attention into Obvious, which says that they “do various things.”

Obvious, which Stone launched alongside other Twitterites Evan Williams and Jason Goldman, is involved in blog platform Medium, as well as Lift, Branch, and a handful of other products.

Biz Stone was recently granted inventor status when his name, along with Jack Dorsey’s, appeared on an approved patent for Twitter. Yes, the entire concept of Twitter wasn’t patented until earlier this month.

Bing Fund was launched last year as an “angel investor with an incubator”. In August, Bing unveiled its initial startups. Now, after remaining quiet for the rest of the year, they seem to be picking up the pace a bit.

Last month, Bing announced the addition of LikeBright to the Bing Fund fold. Today, it’s Sonar. Bing Fund program manager Aya Zook writes on the Bing blog:

March is full of excitement and promise. Spring is just around the corner and people are beginning to get restless. As Austin readies itself for the geek-stampede that is SXSW Interactive, it seems a fitting time for this announcement. It will be an occasion for us to once again have the pleasure of hanging out with the Sonar crew led by founder, Brett Martin.

Over the years, we have crossed paths with Sonar across the land of tech probably more than any other startup. Whether it was TC Disrupt NYC, PSFK NYC, at our own epic pop-up gallery, SMW, and most recently Xconomy NYC, wherever we went, it seemed that the cool little periscope was right there with us. We would bring each other up to speed, and talk about “hey, wouldn’t it be cool to work together?” And go our separate ways until the next serendipitous encounter.

Sonar is a social discovery app that tells users when their friends and friends’ friends are nearby, and as the company puts it, “reveals the hidden connections and small world moments you might have otherwise missed.”

The app takes advantage of social and location data from Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter and LinkedIn to give users context about the people they’re near.

Square and Starbucks are further bolstering their relationship, building on one that already includes millions in investment and a payment option deal. Starting soon, Starbucks customers will be able to purchase Square mobile card readers at their coffee giant’s 7,000 stores.

The Square card reader normally sells for $10, but the company offers a full rebate for new Square-using businesses.

Last August, Square and Starbucks entered into a (slightly more important) partnership that saw Starbucks’ 7,000 stores offer Square as a payment option. Square now processes Starbucks’ credit and debit transactions, and customers can also use their Square Wallet (cardless app) to buy their morning cup of coffee.

Starbucks’ further investment in helping Square become the top mobile payments option in major stores around the country is no surprise considering Starbucks is a major investor in Square. Last September, Square closed a round of funding that included $25 million from Starbucks.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz also joined Square’s Board.

At the time, Square boasted that it was now processing over $8 billion in payments annually. To keep that growth, more small businesses will need to start using Square as their mobiel payments option. And getting their card readers in 7,000 of the most popular retail stores around is a pretty good start.

[via TechCrunch]