WASHINGTON, DC, Firm developing social location-based technology has secured $12.75 million in Series A funding led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Grotech Ventures and SWaN & Legend Ventures.
SocialRadar, Inc. (
www.socialradar.com) today announced it has secured $12.75 million in Series A funding led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Grotech Ventures and SWaN & Legend Ventures.
Also participating in the round are angel investors and technology leaders, including: Steve Case, co-Founder of America Online and Ted Leonsis, Owner & CEO of Monumental Sports & Entertainment, who both participated in the financing as angel investors; Dave Morin, co-Founder and CEO of Path; Kevin Colleran, Venture Partner at General Catalyst Partners and one of the first ten employees of Facebook; Steven Gruber, Managing Partner of Oak Hill Capital Partners; Mark Ein, CEO of Venturehouse Group and Owner of the Washington Kastles; Roger Novak and Jack Biddle, Founders of Novak Biddle Venture Partners; Matthew Pittinsky, CEO of Parchment and co-Founder of Blackboard; Tom Davidson, CEO of EverFi; Dan Cane, CEO of Modernizing Medicine; Andrew Rosen, General Manager of Education Technology at The Advisory Board; Peter Corbett, CEO of iStrategyLabs; Dan Mindus and NextGen Angels, a DC-area angel investor group; and a number of other individual investors and market leaders.
"SocialRadar is on the cutting edge of developing social location-based technology. Today over 1.1 billion people have smartphone devices that can broadcast their locations, and over 2.8 billion people have social profiles online. In the future, technology will inevitably combine the smartphone's location with the power of social networks enabling users to walk into a room and be aware of the people and connections around them. SocialRadar is developing that technology today for the iPhone, Android and Google Glass," said Michael Chasen, the President & CEO of SocialRadar. "I could not be happier that some of the leading venture capitalists and technology experts have come together to invest in this vision."
Joining SocialRadar's Board of Directors will be Dayna Grayson from NEA, Steve Fredrick from Grotech Ventures, Fred Schaufeld from SWaN & Legend Venture Partners and Kevin Colleran.
SocialRadar is led by Founder and CEO Michael Chasen, the co-Founder and former CEO of Blackboard, Inc. During Chasen's 15-year leadership tenure he grew Blackboard to be a global leader in enterprise education technology serving over 20,000 institutions worldwide and over 30M users. Chasen took Blackboard public in 2004 and then sold it to Providence Equity Partners in 2011 for $1.7B.
Matthew Lynch at District Capital Partners acted as financial advisor to SocialRadar through the process and Michael Lincoln at Cooley LLP served as legal counsel.
SocialRadar is accepting registrations for its beta at
www.socialradar.com.
About SocialRadar SocialRadar is building technology that makes you aware of the people and connections around you. Based in Washington, DC, SocialRadar was founded by Michael Chasen, the co-Founder and former CEO of Blackboard. Developing leading-edge technologies in the social location space, SocialRadar is building applications on iPhone, Android and Google Glass that will change the way people connect. For more information, please visit
www.socialradar.com or connect with us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/socialradarapp or on Twitter @socialradarapp.
About New Enterprise Associates New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA) is a leading venture capital firm focused on helping entrepreneurs build transformational businesses across multiple stages, sectors and geographies. With approximately $13 billion in committed capital, NEA invests in technology and healthcare companies at all stages in a company's lifecycle, from seed stage through IPO. The firm's long track record includes more than 175 portfolio company IPOs and more than 295 acquisitions, including investments in technology leaders like Data Domain, CareerBuilder, Diapers.com, Fusion-io, Groupon, Juniper, Macromedia, Salesforce.com, TiVo, and Workday. In the U.S., NEA has two offices in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and one in Menlo Park, California. In addition, New Enterprise Associates (India) Pvt. Ltd. has offices in Bangalore and Mumbai, India and New Enterprise Associates (Beijing), Ltd. has offices in Beijing and Shanghai, China. For additional information, visit www.nea.com.
About Grotech Ventures Founded in 1984, Grotech Ventures is a leading early investor in high-potential technology companies. Grotech seeks innovative, early-stage investments across the IT landscape and continues to invest and add value throughout the life cycle of each portfolio company. The firm has a strong combination of financial backing, industry relationships, and deep domain and operational expertise to accelerate growth. With more than $1 billion in committed capital, Grotech supports early-stage companies through investments starting at $500,000. For more information, visit www.grotech.com.
About SWaN & Legend Ventures SWaN & Legend Venture Partners was formed in 2012 through the combination of SWaN Investors, a firm created by the management team who founded and scaled NEW Customer Service Companies (a unit of NEW Asurion) and Legend Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm. Collectively, the partners have created and distributed billions of dollars in value and have invested $300 million in innovative early and growth stage organizations headed by top-flight teams. The partners actively engage with management in building trusted brands worthy of consumer passions in the fields of retail products and services; technology-enabled commerce and education; food and hospitality; and sports and entertainment. SLVP seeks to invest in organizations that value the ethical treatment of employees, consumers, vendors and communities. For more information, visit www.swanandlegend.com.