Startup FitnessKeeper, the parent company of the RunKeeper smartphone app, has raised $1.11 million and will use the money to build out its nine-person operation and dive into the highly competitive world of now-fashionable mobile fitness applications.
The RunKeeper iPhone app uses GPS locating to track your distance, time, elevation, pace and path on a map and has caught the eye of several major investors since the company was founded two years ago, primarily because it has kept up with rapidly developing technologies.
The app now has features that くlet others watch your progress, live, online, as they trace your mileage and can see varying levels of your workout. In addition, it now offers mobile fitness training and routine plans to help runners train for events.
It also raised eyebrows last year when founder and CEOあJason Jacobs ran the Boston Marathon (pictured)あdressed as an iPhone to promote the business.
The Boston-based company has raised $1.51 million thus far, including $400,000 in seed money from LaunchCapital last fall, along with angel investors Viewlogic founder Will Herman, BzzAgent CEO Dave Balter and Compete.com CEO Don McLagan.
Its latest round of funding was led by well-known Silicon Valley VC firm Oa4ぎa4Сeilly AlphaTech Ventures, which has poured money into startup darlings Bit.ly and Foursquare, and included several new unnamed angels and all its former investors.
a4ぎAWe liked [OATV managing director and co-founder] Bryce [Roberts] and the OATV gang from the minute we met them,a4ぎ Jacobs said in a company blog post today. a4ぎABryce (who also invested in our friends at Foursquare) is an avid cyclist, and like us, is a big believer in mobile/social/fitness/quantified self.a4ぎ
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Companies: Bit.ly, compete.com, fitnesskeeper, Foursquare, LaunchCapital, o&'reailly alphatech ventures, RunKeeper, viewlogic
People: Bryce Roberts, dave balter, don mclagan, Jason Jacobs, will herman
Companies: Bit.ly, compete.com, fitnesskeeper, Foursquare, LaunchCapital, o&'reailly alphatech ventures, RunKeeper, viewlogic
People: Bryce Roberts, dave balter, don mclagan, Jason Jacobs, will herman
Riley McDermid is a contributing reporter to VentureBeat. She was previously the online editor at institutional investing and trading forum Markets Media, which she joined in 2008 from Dow Jones/MarketWatch in New York. Her work has appeared in the The New York Times, the Associated Press, Portfolio Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Barrona4ぎa4г. She has won awards from the American Society of Business Publishers and Editors, the Magazine Association of the Southeast, the Mississippi Press Association and the Atlanta Press Club, and was a finalist for the Pacemaker Prize for excellence in news reporting.
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