We’re fans of uLocate’s Where.com mobile widget, and it looks like investors are too. The company says this morning that it has closed a round of $11 million led by Venrock, with other investors GrandBanks Capital and Kodiak Venture Partners.
Founded in 2003 the Massachusetts-based company also received an investment of $4.5 million in a second round of funding in September of 2004. The company was quiet about how much it had raised last time I had talked to them, so perhaps that was because it was closing this latest round. They say they’ve raised close to $16 million in total.
While mobile LBS is the application everyone loves to hype, the Where.com widget is an interesting way for web-based services to add location functionality. A lot of these companies that are working on the widget like Zillow, probably wouldn’t have the time, skill or now how to do their own GPS-based mobile client. Also the $3 per month subscription is a pretty good deal for all the services like local search, directions, GPS Twitter, and a bunch more.
5 comments so far
11:35 AM PT
I’m glad to see that investors are getting more confident about the viability of LBS services.
12:44 PM PT
Who needs to pay $3 for GPS location service if it is available free of charge from Nokia’s smart2go. Just get one of Nokia’s phones
2:32 PM PT
This is already becoming a crowded space - Ask.com just launched their own subscription funded GPS/added-value-via-LBS app too:
(link)
$3 a month too, which is fairly reasonable (esp on CDMA phones which don’t have free tools from Nokia).
But I’m still not show how successful this kind of micro-payment via subscription model will be, esp as it’s hard to defend against a player offering the same thing for free with monetization coming from lucrative targeted advertising based on location.
10:13 AM PT
This is ridiculous. The “where” product is a horrific one with a terrible UI. I am sure they have close to zero subscribers. Time to start an LBS company it seems. Dumb-ass VCs seem to be everywhere! Venrock that includes you.
5:48 AM PT
Hi everyone.
A few days ago, I was surfing the web and I found out a project that works over most mobile phones which lets you know where your friends are in real time and update your status in twitter. It´s called Dimdix.
On their website they say you don´t need a GPS system to detect your location. Does anyone know how this works?
I´m using a Motorola L7 and amazingly it detected my location.
I cannot stop thinking of all the things I could do with it.
If anyone wants to take a look you can go here
Thanks,
Regards,
Juan