Social ride-sharing start-up and FBfund recipient Zimride announces today a round of seed funding led by FLOODGATE, K9 Ventures and a group of angels including Keith Rabois and Teddy Downey.
Co-founded by Logan Green and John Zimmer, Zimride is a carpool startup that actually makes money, using the Facebook platform to allow people in the same networks to coordinate carpooling. The service is also available at Zimride.com via Facebook Connect.
Future plans for Zimride include further expansion; Zimride currently is the only carpool community that serves a swath of prominent universities and corporations including Stanford, USC, UCLA, UCSF, Cornell, Harvard, University of Michigan and CIGNA.
Says Green “Nobody is doing what we’re doing, in taking a social ride share product to organizations.” The Zimride freemium business model is quite nifty as well; the first 50 users within a given network can sign up for free, and the organization has the option of signing up for a subscription past that. Thus far people have been very receptive.
Green also tells TechCrunch that Zimride will be putting its latest financing towards improving its mobile application and investing in user experience as well as expanding its user base,
“The holy grail of ride-sharing is figuring out how to engage users in a ride sharing program. We reach critical mass when we get 10-20% of an organization signed up.”
With this current seed round, Ann Miura-Ko, a partner at FLOODGATE, will be joining Zimride’s Board of Directors. Manu Kumar, founder of K9 Ventures will come on as a board observer. Zimride is also hiring for engineers and designers at zimride.com/jobs.
Zimride makes sharing rides for drivers and passengers fun and easy. It’s a new spin on ridesharing, using social networks to enable real connections. In seconds you can set up a profile, see and book a ride in your area, or post a ride of your own. With Zimride profiles, you can view photos, music and radio preferences to ensure an enjoyable ride. Zimride is building a marketplace for drivers to sell empty seats in their car by matching them...
FLOODGATE is a venture capital firm specializing in micro-cap investments in start-ups. The firm seeks to invest in technology related sectors. It typically invests between $150,000 and $1 million. The firm prefers to invest in companies located in either the San Francisco Bay Area or in Austin, Texas. It prefers to invest alongside other experienced private investors or top-tier venture firms. FLOODGATE is based in Palo Alto, California.
Keith is the Chief Operating Officer at Square and a prominent angel investor. Previously, he was the Vice President of Strategy & Business Development for Slide, where he is responsible for Slide’s corporate strategy and partnerships. During his tenure, Slide has become the world’s leading social entertainment company, offering millions of people worldwide a fun way to communicate and engage on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Prior to Slide, Keith served as Vice President of Business & Corporate Development...
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