Gowala Greylock Partners - Gowalla, a location-based social networking service, has raised $8.4 million in Series B funding. Greylock Partners led the round, and was joined by fellow new backers Shasta Ventures, Maples Investments, Ron Conway, Kevin Rose, Gary Vaynerchuk, Shervin Pishevar, Jason Calacanis and Chris Sacca. Returning investors included Alsop-Louie Partners and Founders Fund. Gowalla is based in Austin, Texas.
Gowalla, a location-based social networking service, today announced the completion of a Series B funding round totaling $8.4 million. Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm Greylock Partners led the round. The capital infusion will be used to strengthen growth efforts and further enhance Gowalla's development capability. With this latest funding, Gowalla has now raised more than $10 million since it was founded in 2007.
"Gowalla has rapidly attracted a passionate user base by creating an innovative, useful service that is also a lot of fun," says Greylock's David Thacker, who has joined Gowalla's board of directors as part of this investment. "It's exciting to discover new places and earn stamps for your passport from places as diverse as Buckingham Palace and the Sydney Opera House to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the coffee shop down the street. Gowalla also connects you with your friends, letting you share your travels and meet up with others in real time."
David Thacker, a native of Austin, Texas, works out of Greylock's Silicon Valley office where he invests in consumer Internet and enterprise software ventures and advises several Greylock companies including Auditude, Oodle, Pandora and Redfin. David has hands-on operating and product experience from high growth technology businesses, including five years at Google, where he oversaw the development of key components of Google's advertising products and drove the expansion of products into international markets.
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Co-Founder and Executive Chairman and Partner at Greylock, will join Gowalla as a board observer. New investors joining this round include: Shasta Ventures, Maples Investments, Ron Conway, Kevin Rose, Gary Vaynerchuk, Shervin Pishevar, Jason Calacanis and Chris Sacca. Existing investors Alsop-Louie Partners and Founders Fund also participated in the round.
In the ten weeks since Gowalla officially launched, 50,000 users have joined the service. In that short period its community has created and checked in at 150,000 locations in over 8,500 cities representing 100 countries around the world. Gowalla is now seeing more than 20,000 check-ins daily and its users are adding new locations at a rate of 3,500 or more each day.
"We believe there is a bright future for location-based applications and we're stoked to have Greylock Partners - with their experience working with large-scale networks like Digg, LinkedIn and Facebook - join us in building our innovative service," said Josh Williams, co-founder and CEO of Gowalla.
About Gowalla
Gowalla inspires people to share their favorite places and events with friends while discovering the world around them. The Gowalla service is currently available on iPhone and Android. Formerly Alamofire, Inc., Gowalla is also the creator of the addictive Facebook game PackRat. The company is privately held and is headquartered in Austin, Texas. For more information on the company, visit www.gowalla.com.
About Greylock Partners
Greylock, a top Silicon Valley venture capital firm, has partnered with entrepreneurs for 44 years to help them build market-leading businesses. Among the companies Greylock has supported are Ascend Communications, CheckFree, CipherTrust, Cloudera, Constant Contact, Continental Cable, Decru, Data Domain, Digg, DoubleClick, Facebook, Farecast, Imperva, Internet Security Systems, Ikanos, Legato, LinkedIn, Media Metrix, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Openwave, Open Market, Pandora, Redfin, Red Hat, RightNow Technologies, Success Factors, Tellabs, Trilogy, Wily Technology, Workday and Zipcar.
The firm recently announced the closing of Greylock XIII, a $575 million fund and the addition of a new investing partner, LinkedIn Co-Founder and Executive Chairman Reid Hoffman. Greylock operates in a number of global centers of innovation, including Boston, China (Beijing), India (Bangalore), Israel (Herzliya) and Silicon Valley. For more information about Greylock Partners, please visit www.greylock.com or http://www.facebook.com/greylock.
