Minnesota Startup Jingit Raises $7 Million, Pays Consumers To Watch Ads

Jingit, a startup based in Edina Minnesota, has raised $7 million dollars in investment capital according to a regulatory filing. The startup was founded last year by Joe Rogness, the former CEO of tech consultancy Two Fish and Todd Rooke a former executive with Hewlitt Packard.

Jingit allows ordinary consumers to earn up to $15 per week for watching ads and giving feedback on them. Household brands like Walmart, Hershey and Kraft are in Jingit’s stable of clients.

The company partnered with US Bank last year which issues a debit card on their behalf. Jingit customers’ earnings from ad watching is directly deposited onto the debit cards. Each ad yields the user between $.05 and $.50 cents. Payments vary based on advertiser, market study, and demographics. For instance advertisers may pay more to have an 18 year old watch an advertisement for a video game rather than someone older. Kraft may pay more for people in an older demographic to watch their ad.

Jingit has fail safes in place to make sure that their users are actually watching ads. The ad will stop if another browser window or tab is opened while the ad is playing.

The startup gives advertisers unparalleled ability to drill down to their ideal customer. They’ve found that advertisers are willing to pay more money for this kind of targeted feedback.

Prior to this $7 million dollar round, Jingit had raised $3.5 million dollars.

Linkage

Source: Minneapolis, St. Paul, Business Journal

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New Orleans Car Advertising Startup Advercar Raises $2 Million In Seed Round

Advercar is a New Orleans based startup that lets people make money by wrapping or putting other advertisements on their vehicle and driving around.

The startup was founded by Neil Turner who was the former Chief Strategy Officer at iSeatz. Advercar pays drivers to put advertisements on the front, sides and backs of their cars. It’s very similar to taxicab advertising except on private vehicles. The company charges advertisers $280 per month which is roughly the same amount charged by taxi cabs.

Advercar passes up to $100 per month to the driver. They also say that some advertisers give drivers the opportunity to make more than the $100 per month.

Advercar’s $2 million dollar seed round was led by Canaan Partners. 1-800-Flowers, Branford Castle Private Equity, New Orleans Startup Fund, Jit Sexana and TiE Angels Boston also participated in the round. With this round 1-800-Flowers CEO Jim McCann and Canaan partner Deepak Karma have joined Advercar’s Board of Directors.

The startup’s idea was originally pitched last year during New Orleans Entrepreneur Week as part of their Power Pitch competition where they won first place.

Advercar already has 5,000 drivers. The company tracks their drivers with a GPS tool that allows them to report back to advertisers and show them where their ad was seen. They also use a calculation method set forth by the Traffic Audit Bureau that allows them to calculate, roughly, how many people saw the ad. Advercar has a special group of AdverMoms that allows advertisers to reach other moms.

TechCrunch’s Anthony Ha asked Turner if it felt strange for an Advercar driver to drive around with advertising on their car. Turner replied;

“You notice for your first 20 minutes, but after that you forget they’re on. You do notice if you go to a grocery store, because people will be staring at your car.”

Linkage

Find advercar online here

Source: Silicon Bayou TechCrunch

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Israeli Startup Walkme Raises $5.5 Million

Less than two weeks ago we brought you an interview with Israeli startup Walkme. Walkme is the easiest way for companies, startups and anyone on the web to create walk-thru’s for your readers and end users.

No matter how easy or complex your task is, WalkMe wants to provide you with the tool to create an easy step-by-step “Walk thru” guide to everything. Walkme is a simple to use plugin.

Once you have it installed you just move about your screen in the natural steps it takes to do whatever process you want to teach. As you begin to complete each step you write what the step is, how to do it and add your text balloon and move on to the next step. You can easily create “walk thru” instructions while you’re creating your WalkMe walk thru. Anything from how to complete an order, to how to change your password, can easily be explained using Walkme. If you want to show someone an easy to use trick on your own website, you can create a WalkMe “walk thru”.

Basically if you can do the task you want to teach, and if you can use a mouse, than you’re in business.

Walkme’s $5.5 million dollar series B round was led by Gemini Israeli Ventures. Mangrove Capital Partners and Giza Venture Capital also participated. Mangrove Capital Partners provided an undisclosed amount of capital back in April for Walkme.

“Using online services is a necessity for everyone. However, businesses are struggling with ineffective and costly solutions to make sure their users are able to use their offerings,” said Eran Wagner, General Partner at Gemini Israel Ventures. “WalkMe is a disruptive system that can fundamentally change the way online services engage with their users online. WalkMe’s ability to increase visitor clarity, satisfaction and conversion while dramatically reducing help-desk costs, makes it a no-brainer for a business of any size. We look forward to seeing WalkMe maintain its explosive growth and become an industry standard for guidance by replacing video-tutorials and help sections on websites – just as GPS systems have become a standard replacement for maps.”

Dan Adika, CEO of WalkMe, said, “the demand for our online guidance solution is growing exponentially and we sought funding to support this growth. We now have thousands of registered businesses that are utilizing WalkMe’s revolutionary technology to better guide their users online. With this round, we’ve found investors who shared our vision of creating a company that changes the way people use the web.”

Linkage:

Check out Walkme here

Here’s our interview with Walkme

Source: GigaOM

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Philadelphia The Founder City, To Invest $3.5 Million In Startups

Philadelphia Mayor Michael A Nutter announced today that the city of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation has created a joint two-tiered investment and grant making initiative called “Startup PHL”. Philadelphia is looking to spur more innovation and encourage startups to move to the city of brotherly love.

In a video Nutter talks about Philadelphia being home to the most important startup of all , the United States of America. Now 200 years later Nutter is looking to attract more founders to the city.

To do this Philadelphia is issuing an RFP for a private investment firm to match and manage a $3 million dollar investment from the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation to establish the Startup PHL Seed Fund. The RFP deadline is December 7th. Those startups receiving investment from the Startup PHL seed fund will either need to be in Philadelphia or relocate to Philadelphia to meet a yet to be established residency requirement.

The other $500,000 will come in the form of grants. For that, the City’s commerce department has put out a call for ideas. They’re looking for “innovative, exciting proposals for ideas and programs that support startups and entrepreneurs of all stripes in Philadelphia” In a release they said: “the goal of this fund is to make grants to proposals that enhance collaboration in the startup community; attract new entrepreneurs from both within and outside the city; foster networks for entrepreneurs to collaborate with each other, mentors, talent and investors and ultimately lead to more business and job creation in Philadelphia.”

In the government/private partnership for the Startup PHL seed fund the private firm will handle all of the investment decisions. Longtime Nutter aide Luke Butler says he hopes that the seed fund will start making it’s first investments as early as summer 2013.

It’s obvious that this is a “startup community” initiative as much as it is a technology investment initiative. It’s evident that Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh’s “Return of Community” is starting to pop up in other cities.

“We have broader goals than a return on investment, but we’re hoping to leverage a relatively small public investment that generates more private capital that highlights this important sector and conveys momentum here,” Butler said. “The tech sector is an important part of our economy in that it’s going to be a driver of job creation and is [a way of] keeping college grads here,”

New York, Boston, Austin, Seattle and Baltimore all have government/private partnerships in one form or another to drive early stage investments in startups and keep them in their cities. Las Vegas has a $350 million dollar private initiative from Hsieh to revitalize the downtown area through startups, tech, education and real estate to make downtown Las Vegas a more serendipitous place for entrepreneurs and recently relocated Zappos employees.

Local startup investor and supporter Brad Dennenberg of Seed Philly told nibletz in regards to today’s announcement:

“Today’s announcement marks a significant step towards putting Philadelphia’s startup ecosystem on the national map. Philly is now one of just a few cities in the country with city-backed funding, proving the area’s dedication to growing and retaining high growth (and high paying) companies. With the cost of launching a minimum viable product now lower than ever before, this fund should make a significant impact in a short period of time. I couldn’t be more excited! “

While technology is typically the focus in startup initiatives like this Butler says they want to hear everything.

“If you have an idea, an organization or individual, that supports growing business, jobs in the city, we want to hear it, whatever it is,” he added Technically Philly Reported.

Linkage:

Startup PHL is here

Startup PHL’s call for ideas is here

Everywhereelse is here

Philadelphia: First Round Capital Debuts “Dorm Room Fund” For Student Startups

Josh Kopelman is the managing partner at Philadelphia based First Round Capital. While based in Philadelphia, First Round Capital, invests in companies across the country.

Kopelman got his start as an entrepreneur with his company Infonautics which he founded in his dorm room as a junior at Penn. By the time he graduated the company had 20 employees. Kopelman believes that colleges and universities house some of the best ecosystems for innovation.

That’s why he’s started the “Dorm Room Fund”. This new fund is set up to become a fund that is for students, and eventually run by students. While First Round Capital is injecting $500,000 in seed money to the fund, Kopelman is hopeful that the initial first investments will then select the next round, and the next and so on and so forth. Kopelman is looking forward to being an advisor to those companies selected to the fund.

This new student fund will:

1. Be run by a students – not suits. A student investment team would know the entire student and campus ecosystem – allowing them to find, screen and invest in the best ideas

2. Be located on campus, so that it constantly has a feel for the vibe on campus

3. Students are engineers, marketers, financers, writers, doctors, lawyers and researchers… Allow them to focus on investing in companies that disrupt big markets that they (students) have expertise in.

4. Finance students based on their needs. Students are scrappy and often just need that first $10,000 – $20,000 in order to build their product and ship a minimum viable product – let’s call their current stage the dorm room stage…

First Round Capital and Kopelman hope to introduce the Dorm Room Fund in college cities across the country. This first round of investments is concentrated to Philadelphia and students that are either enrolled in, or just recently graduated from Philadelphia area schools like the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel.

Kopelman is currently on the prowl looking for the first 8 students who will serve on the investment committee, which will oversee which student run startups get investments from the fund. If you’re interested in being considered for the investment committee you need to be a student in the Philadelphia area and hit the link below.

Linkage:

Join the committee or submit your startup here

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Charlotte Startup: Rawporter Raises $300,000 Seed Round With Two Inaugural Investments

We are very excited to report that are good friends, and longtime supporters of Nibletz and our previous ventures, have raised a $300,000 seed round.

Rawporter is a socially driven market place where citizen journalists can post their photos and videos of interesting news events. Rawporter has an e-commerce platform built in where users can sell their pics and videos to news sites, bloggers and even tv stations.

The idea was born when co-founders Kevin Davis and Rob Gaige were eating dinner in Uptown Charlotte. They saw a pretty intense auto accident outside of the restaurant. What they noticed was that all of the people passing by ( including themselves) had snapped some pictures and videos. However by the time the news crews arrived the accident had all but cleared.

Both Davis and Gaige thought that there had to be a way, outside of emailing the photos and videos unsolicited to a news director, to get eyewitness news to the media.

That’s the core to Rawporter now they’ve added social features and more.

Rawporter was able to attract funding from two new funds in their home state of North Carolina. This the first investment by the newly formed IMAF (Inception Micro Angel Fund) Cape Fear and the N.C. Fund of Funds.

Gofman Holdings also participated in the round.

“We formed IMAF Cape Fear to invest in emerging technology businesses. Rawporter is an exciting way for us to take advantage of the photo and video-sharing momentum. Additionally, our expertise in Mobile and eCommerce will better prepare Rawporter for success,” said Dallas Romanowski, Fund Director at IMAF Cape Fear.

As mentioned above, Rawporter is also the first investment by the N.C. Fund of Funds program, a component of the N.C. Small Business Credit Initiative, which was created through federal funding under the Small Business Jobs Act.

“We will be investing in early stage North Carolina companies, like Rawporter, with the potential for exceptional job growth. Our financial support will lead to exciting employment opportunities in the ever-growing North Carolina technology sector,” said Timothy Janke, Director of Private Equity Initiatives for North Carolina’s Small Business & Technology Development Center.

“Although we’re pleased with the progress to date, this funding provides the opportunity to expand faster and introduce functionality our community’s been clamoring for,” said Rawporter Co-founder Kevin Davis.

Linkage:

More coverage of our friends at Rawporter

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Pittsburgh Startup: DuoLingo Raises $15 Million In Latest Round

Pittsburgh startup DuoLingo has just completed their latest round of funding to the best of $15 million dollars, rounding out a great week of funding for startups outside the valley.

DuoLingo isworking on a large scale crowd sourcing platform for language and translation. It was founded by Carnegie Mellon University Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Louis Von Ahn.

If Von Ahn’s name sounds familiar its because he is the same man behind Captcha the extra layer of privacy control used when logging into many websites. Captcha was eventually purchased by Google. Google uses the technology to help prevent computerized logins, but perhaps more importantly to verify addresses for Google Maps.

It’s that large scale verification that has been reworked and made into a platform to grow the largest translation database in the world.

Union Square Ventures and New Enterprise Associates led the $15 million dollar series B round. Back in June we reported that celebrity angel investor Ashton Kutcher had invested $3 million dollars into the company.

Linkage:

Find out more about DuoLingo here

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Philly Startup: Perceptual Network Completes An A-List $1M First Round For People Connecting

Perceptual Networks, a startup proud to from Philadelphia Pennsylvania announced today the completion of their first round of funding. The startup was founded by Jim Young founder of Hot or Not and I/O Ventures and Cheyenne Ehrlich who’s credits include taking two startups from 0 to 30 million plus users.

This round of funding for Perceptual Networks has one of the most impressive lists of backers to come from any startup based outside of Silicon Valley or New York. Venture firms First Round Capital and Bullpen Capital participated in the round. The list of angels is like a roll call of some of the top A-List players in the startup world:

Max Levchin (founder of PayPal and Slide and Chairman of Yelp),
Steve Chen (founder of YouTube and AVOS),
Michael Birch (founder of Bebo and Monkey Inferno)
Richard Yoo (founder of Rackspace and ServerBeach)
Shawn Colo (founder of Demand Media)
Joshua Schachter (founder of Tasty Labs and Delicious)
Alexis Ohanian (founder of Reddit)
James Hong (founder of HotOrNot)
Philip Kaplan (founder of Fandalism, Blippy, AdBrite, TinyLetter and many, many more)
Naval Ravikant (founder of Epinions and AngelList)
Tikhon Bernstam (founder of Scribd and Parse)
Garry Tan (founder of Posterous and Partner at Y-Combinator)
Gabriel Weinberg (founder of DuckDuckGo and NamesDatabase)
Jameson Hsu (founder of Mochi Media)
Bob Ippilito (founder of Mochi Media)
Ken Keller (founder of IGN.com and Cadence)
Paul Bragiel (partner at I/O Ventures)
Tom McInerney (former COO at Klout)
Bill Lee (founder of Remarq and Social Concepts and investor in Tesla)
Nils Johnson (founder of Beautylish)

One of the best parts about this news as that not one of the investors required the startup to move away from Philadelphia. After speaking with Ehrlich we’re not sure that they would have taken money from an investor that asked them to relocate. In regards to Philadelphia Ehrlich told nibletz.com:

“Jim’s wife is from here, and he had moved here about three years ago. That’s why it was on the list initially. But there are a lot of great things to be said about Philly:

Great engineering schools
Lower cost of living (relative to SF or NYC) and better quality of life
A great food and arts scene
As an employers, we see great talent here and limited competition for that talent, which results in a more stable workforce

Plus, the people are nice, friendly and open here. It really is a lovely place.”

Perceptual Networks takes people discovery to a new level by adding in the connection piece. Perceptual Networks is developing a suite of products that make it easy for people to find the people they best connect with, whether they are looking for the right co-workers or employees, the right relationship, the right friends and activity partners or the right community to live in.

“Over the last 7-8 years, Jim and I have been having a long series of conversations about how random the process is by which people meet and get to know each other. Finally, it just became obvious that we should work on this problem that was a central part of our thinking and dialogue for so many years.” Ehrlich told nibletz.com

“This is something that Jim and I have been talking about since the day we met,” said Cheyenne Ehrlich, founder and CEO of Perceptual Networks. “Your community, friends, co-workers and life partner, if you have one, collectively have such a huge impact on the quality of your life. We want to make the process of finding and developing that community of people as easy as possible, for everyone.”

While most discovery apps are about discovering someone right now, wherever you are, the tools provided by Perceptual Networks are looking for a more long term effect.

Investors in Perceptual Networks are confident they have a win. Young’s HotOrNot was founded in 2000 and sold for $20 million in 2008. HotOrNot is even featured in the movie about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook in a scene where Zuckerberg and his roomates are combing through HotOrNot and adapt it to Harvard.

Linkage:

For more on Perceptual Networks visit their website here

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Baltimore Discovery Startup: Woofound Discovers Another Cool Mill

High profile Baltimore Startup WooFound has reportedly closed another 1 million dollar round of funding, bringing their total capital investment to $2.2 million. Not too shabby for a Baltimore startup in the discovery space,

WooFound is far from your run of the mill discovery application. That’s most likely the fuel behind the millions of dollars they’ve raised to date. Woofound matches your personality to things you want to do. Woofound was actually built in conjunction with psychoanalyst and psychotherapist Dr. Noreen Honeycutt from Baltimore Maryland. This personality engine coupled with a simple “me or not me” button at the end of the recommendation make the app more appealing and at the same time allow the app to teach itself in ways similar apps can not.

The Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO) invested $75,000 in this latest $1 million dollar round. WooFound was one of 16 Startups to receive funding from TEDCO as part of the Maryland Technology Transfer And Commcialization Fund.

“We’re honored to receive this investment from TEDCO to help us further develop our Career Application,” says Co-CEO Dan Sines. “All of our backers have provided tremendous support, not just financially, and we are grateful for their commitment to Woofound.”

Linkage:

For more on WooFound visit them here

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Memphis Startup Accelerator ZeroTo510 Sets Record With Over 80% Follow On Funding In Less Than 30 Days

That headline is a true testament to the power of the cohort based ZeroTo510 startup accelerator in Memphis Tennessee. Five of the six startups in their recently graduated class received $100,000 or more in follow on funding from MB Ventures and Innova Memphis.

Four of the startups received follow on funding to continue acceleration of their businesses. Those four companies were:

BioNanovations has developed a device that uses bionanotechnology for rapid diagnosis of bacterial infection.
EcoSurg has developed an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional foam patient positioners used in surgeries.
Nanophthalmics has developed, through the use of nanotechnology, a surgical device to more effectively treat corneal abrasions.
Urova Medical has developed a minimally invasive treatment to address feminine stress urinary incontinence.

“In each case, we believe these four companies have shown the progress, the growth and proof-of-concept that were expected to move to the next phase of funding,” said Allan Daisley, director of innovation and sustainability initiatives for Memphis Bioworks Foundation and program director for ZeroTo510. “It is extremely rewarding to us as an organization, because the funding of four companies exceeds what we considered to be a measure of success when this program was launched.”

The fifth startup to receive follow on funding was Restore Medical. Restore Medical wowed the audience when Co-Founder Shawn Fynn announced during their presentation that they had already secured a purchase order valued at $3.75 million dollars pending 510k approval. In the case of Restore Medical, they decided to skip the acceleration investment and went directly to a Series A round. MB Ventures and Innova Memphis are leading that Series A round with an undisclosed investment, assumed to be more than the $100,000 Restore Medical would have received with the acceleration funds.

Handminder, a startup that has developed a rehabilitation device for people who have suffered a stroke, to regain use of their hands, did not receive follow on funding.

With an 80% success rate, by the standard of “follow on funding” Zeroto510 is the most successful accelerator in Tennessee.

Zeroto510 is a joint venture between Memphis Bioworks with cohort based accelerator programming provided by SeedHatchery a product of LaunchYourCity.

LaunchYourCity CEO & President Eric Matthews said: “The results speak for themselves. 35 companies have entered our incubators because of our efforts. EmergeMemphis has a waiting list for the first time. We have invested time and money in 12 promising startup technologies at our research institutions, two of which have started up as new companies. Over 20 companies have received pre-seed capital of $50,000 or less. Of those 8 have received follow-on capital of $100,000 or greater.”.

In addition to Zeroto510 and SeedHatchery LaunchYourCity has a sister program for independent filmmakers called “FuelFilm”. Also the local music incubator, The Memphis Music Foundation, has replicated some of the LaunchYourCity programming into their music resource offerings.

Linkage:

Check out LaunchYourCity at LaunchYourCity.com

Zeroto510 site is here

Nobody covers the Southeast like we do, more here

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Central Illinois Angels Invest In Startup: Intellihot Green Technologies

The Heartland Partnership announced yesterday that the Central Illinois Angels, angel network, has made another investment to a Central Illinois based technology startup,

Intellihot Green Technologies is based in Galesburg Illinois, The company has designed, and now manufactures, tankless gas water heaters. Every year hundreds of thousands of kilowatt hours of energy are wasted by heating water sitting in a tank.

Intellihot’s tankless systems for commercial and residential locations, heat water without a tank on an as needed basis.

Central Illinois Angels have invested $325,000 in the company which started out in the Peoria NEXT Innovation Center. Now that Intellihot’s water heaters are in production their manufacturing is based in Galesburg. The company continues to maintain an office presence at Peoria NEXT.

The $325,000 is part of a larger syndicated round. The Central Illinois Angels have invested $3 million in 11 companies to date.

Linkage:

Check out Intellihot here.

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Atlanta Startups To Win In CTW Breakup

Earlier this summer Atlanta super angel, Sig Mosely came out of retirement. It was announced that he was joining forces with Palaniswamy Rajan to form the $25 million dollar CTW ventures fund. Mosely also participated in a $600,000 round led by Dallas Maverick’s owner and fellow super angel Mark Cuban, in Atlanta startup Badgy.. It’s unclear whether or not it was Mosely or CTW in that round.

Now, just two months after the start of CTW the partners, Mosely and Rajan are parting ways. They are divorcing over what the Atlanta Business Journal is equating to “irreconcilable differences.

Rajan prefers to go long tail on technology ventures.

“Raj much prefers to dig deep, deep, deep into the technology,” Mosley said to the Business Journal “That does not do anything for me.”

Rajan feels the same way about Mosely’s desire to invest in entrepreneurs. Mosely is more of a risk taker which is actually great for startups.

Both men will go there separate ways but that doesn’t mean Mosely is going back into retirement. Mosely is creating his own fund that will invest between $200,000 and $500,000 in entrepreneur lead startups.

Mosely is hoping that his fund will be a feeder fund for deal flow with larger firms like Menlo Park Ventures.

Prior to retiring a first time in 2010 Mosely had oversaw the investment in over 130 technology companies as the President of Imlay Investments.

Linkage:

Source: Atlanta Business Journal

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Memphis Startup: Restore Medical Kicks Off Demo Day With A $3.75M Purchase Order

We have no problem admitting that ninety percent of the ideas, and startups that are showing off today at Zeroto510’s demo day fly way over our head. There’s one thing we know real well though and that’s millions of dollars.

Today in Memphis Tennessee, Zeroto510, the first cohort based medical device accelerator in the country graduated their first class. For an overview of the accelerator and the startups presenting today, click here.

One of the startups we’ve gotten a chance to know here in Memphis is Restore Medical. We met co-founders Ryan Ramkhelawan and Shawn Flynn at an office hours event we held in Memphis in June. That’s where we first heard about there new and innovative way to sterilize surgical instruments.

Traditional methods of sterilizing surgical instruments have been in place since Flynn was a surgical assistant in the US Army 20 years ago. Yes, with all the innovation we’ve experienced in the country in the last two decades, the sterilization of surgical instruments still resembles the way a high volume chain restaurant washes their silverware for a dinner rush. Instruments are piled into a basket with no regard for blades, needles, pins and of course accidents.

Restore Medical has two key elements to their business; protecting patients from infections from dirty instruments and saving hospitals money. Restore Medical’s new sterilization process does both. Restore Medical’s process keeps the surgical instruments separated, or rather organized and spread out in a way that every instrument is equally sterilized throughout the process.

When we met at office hours the duo explained that there are a lot of faults in the current system. They should know this as both have had surgery support career paths for over 20 years. One of the faults is the fact that if one tool is missing from a set of tools for a procedure the operating room needs to call down for a brand new set. This can take up to two hours, on a rush. Doctors are faced with whether they are going to keep a patient under anesthesia for the wait or wake them up and put them back under. Of course both of those options can be costly and risky.

During the presentation today Flynn highlighted the fact that with Obama Care taking effect in 2014, there will be 30 million more patients in the system. Now is the time that hospitals need to streamline processes, cut down costs and maximize their certifications. Hospitals need to make sure that their infection rates are low so that they can be reimbursed for patients they take without traditional insurance.

Restore Medical can increase revenue for hospitals by $14.5 million dollars per year (each) and save $500,000 in hard costs.

Their technology, coupled with the revenue by changing to Restore Medical’s system has attracted 5 Wellstar hospitals to already putting in a purchase order. The purchase order hinges on Restore Medical getting their 510K. If their 510K is approved that purchase order is $3.75 million dollars.

Linkage:

Check out Restore Medical Here

Check out Zero to 510 here

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Toronto Startup ShopLocket Raises $1M For Simple Selling Platform

Two weeks ago we brought you an interview with Toronto startup ShopLocket. This innovative new startup has developed a simple selling platform, where selling anything online, in a one off sale, is as easy as embedding a YouTube video. From ShopLocket’s platform you can sell your digital camera, pair of shoes, dress, car or whatever else you want to unload on any social media channel, your personal blog, website or anywhere that you can embed anything.

There are three easy steps to listing an item on ShopLocket, just create your sale, share it and sell it. You can sell whatever you want. Got some old baseball cards? Sell them. Have an old cell phone? Sell it! Want to teach guitar lessons, no problem. Best of all there is no coding required. They also offer two payment options PayPal and Stripe.

ShopLocket was born after co-founder Katherine Hague had needed to sell some shirts for a consulting job she was working on. Setting up a traditional e-commerce site would have been too costly and too time consuming. Using an existing market place like e-Bay or Craigslist was too unprofessional. So ShopLocket was born.

We love the concept and it seems easy enough to quickly ramp up their user base. Rho Canada Ventures, Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, BDC Venture Capital, Relay Ventures and Extreme Venture Partners obviously see the vision as well as they all came together last week to fund ShopLocket’s seed round to the beat of $1 million dollars.

“The main use of the funds will be to grow the team, both for marketing and development,” ShopLocket co-founder Katherine Hague said in an interview with BetaKit. “Up until now we were a team of three; Andrew Louis my co-founder, Dan Kalmar our Community Manager, and myself. Already we’ve added two team members, Jaclyn Konzelmann for business development and Sumanth Ravipati as our second developer. We expect to be adding a full-time designer and a third developer later in the year.”

Hague reports that a lot of this round came from their participation in Extreme Startups accelerator program. That program gives startups a $50,000 seed in the beginning of the program and an additional $150,000 investment at the end of the program. Many of the other institutional investors that participated in the round, did so because of their relationship with Extreme Startups. Hague said the round took under two months from pitching to money in the bank.

Obviously for a round to come together that quick it’s more than just their participation in an accelerator. Hague says:

“I think what separates us from a lot of different ways of selling online is how easy and social it is to sell. In minutes, someone can have a professional way to sell online. In addition to that, if someone likes the product that you’re selling, they’re able to either share a link to that product with their friends, or even embed it right in their own site.” she told nibletz.com

When a product is easy to understand, easy to use and looks great, like ShopLocket, it doesn’t matter where you’re located, you have a better chance of winning.

Linkage:

Our interview with ShopLocket

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