Bragster, a London-based social network for dares (think Jackass meets Facebok), has closed a $3.5 million Series A round of venture capital funding led by Intel Capital, the global investment arm of Intel Corp, reports TechCrunch UK. They were joined by angel investor David Frankel who previously invested in companies including GetMeIn and SiteAdvisor (sold to Ticketmaster and McAfee, respectively). Bragster is the re-launched Gottabet which won a seed round in 2006 but dumped its cash betting model. In Bragster you don’t place cash bets, you simply ‘brag’ to your friends that you will do something, like turn up at work in your pyjamas. Revenues will eventually come from ‘sponsored brags’ created by brands and a white label version. Bragster is biggest in English speaking countries like the UK, US and Canada, with about 800,000 users globally after a year of operations. Bragster was foundered by Belgium-born Wim Vernaeve and Bertrand Bodson who run the company in London, with a 10 person team. The site is built on Ruby on Rails. Bragster joins a new wave of sites where you place non-cash bets on things such as news events (e.g. HubDub) and might make an acquisition target for a larger social network or a media company if it can build out its reach.
