Mobile gifting startup Giiv raised $3.35 million in a series A round announced today. Investors included Google CEO Eric Schmidt (through his personal seed fund TomorrowVentures), Saban Ventures, Founder Collective, and SK Telecom Ventures. Schmidt was already a seed investor.
If the investors could have texted the $3.35 million into Giiv’s bank account, they probably would have. Giiv is a mobile gifting service which works via text messages, an iPhone app, and a Facebook app. It’s tag line is “texting with benefits.”
Giiv makes sending gifts easy by letting people text a redemption code for a store credit to a friend. Instead of buying someone a gift card, you can simply send them an SMS code via Giiv which they can use in both physical and online stores, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Macy’s, and Fandango.
Giiv is a text message gifting platform that allows users to give tangible items to other individuals instantaneously via text message delivered to the recipient’s mobile device redeemable for specified items at the point-of-sale of partner retailers.
Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin recruited Eric Schmidt from Novell, where he led that company’s strategic planning, management and technology development as chairman and CEO. Since coming to Google, Eric has focused on building the corporate infrastructure needed to maintain Google’s rapid growth as a company and on ensuring that quality remains high while product development cycle times are kept to a minimum. Along with Larry and Sergey, Eric shares responsibility for Google’s day-to-day operations. Eric’s Novell...
Founder Collective is a seed-stage venture capital fund, built by a collection of successful entrepreneurs. They are headquartered in New York City and Cambridge, but make investments all over the world.
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