Boston Startup: SCVNGR Announces $12M Round For LevelUp Expansion

by Kyle in Boston, Everywhere Else, Funding, Startups
Comments Off on Boston Startup: SCVNGR Announces $12M Round For LevelUp Expansion 0 Like 1,304

Boston location based scavenger startup SCVNGR has secured another $12 million in funding. This time it’s to roll out their payment platform LevelUp on a national level.  LevelUp is currently in 8 US cities and plans to rollout nation wide.

“This is a new round of preferred stock that will be left open for 1-2 more large strategic partners to join,” SCVNGR founder Seth Priebatsch said in an email to the Boston Business Journal. “We’re already in late-stage conversations with them — just haven’t officially closed on their funds yet.”

LevelUp is a gamified, deals based mobile payment system that connects to a users current credit or debit card. The user gets a discount by using the LevelUp app the first time at a merchant and can earn more discounts by continuing to pay with LevelUp.

LevelUp is currently supported at 3,000 locations in their 8 states including national hamburger chain Johnny Rockets. They have nearly $200,000 users and are paint $2 million dollars per month through the service. Towering the adaption of services like Google Wallet.

LevelUp is currently available in  Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego and Chicago.  SCVNGR will use the investment to add 40 people to their sales team and add more exciting merchants across more cities.

Linkage:

Check out LevelUp here at their website

Here’s LevelUp’s iTunes page

LevelUp in the Google Play Store

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Sqoot Puts Foot In Mouth With Sexist Comment, Now Move On

by Kyle in Events, Featured, Startups
1 Comment 0 Like 2,037

We’re just 10 days away from what was looking like a great even in Boston, MA, the API Jam. The API Jam, a hackathon of sorts, was set for March 31st to April 1st. However, after what people are calling a grave mistake the event may not happen after all.

In an event flyer, the company hosting the event, NY based deals site Sqoot.com said that one of the perks or benefits for participating was the fact that “women” would get beer for the participants.

Women as a perk set off a firestorm of comments on Twitter calling the team behind Sqoot sexist, and scumbags.  According to tech.li Heroku, Cloudmine, Levelup and MongoHQ have all withdrawn their support of the event. LevelUp was supposed to provide credit’s for the food trucks.

We totally think that the line may have been in bad taste what I’m having a hard time grasping is the difference between that line and the scantily clad women at the LevelUp/Amex party at SXSW in support of the Jay Z event, which were of course there to serve beer.

More after the break
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