Goby, any activity-focused search engine that helps people find things to do with their free time, has raised $2.5 million in new funding from investors including Flybridge Capital and Kepha Partners. The latest investment brings goby’s total funding to $7.5 million.
Goby is focused exclusively on event or activity driven local searches. You do one search, specifying what you want to do, where you want the activity to be based, and when you want to participate. Goby will aggregate listings from around the web and present you with the options within your search parameters.
For example, I searched for wine tastings in Chicago this weekend and received one matching result. Clearly, Goby’s main competition are search engine like Google and Bing. It probably would have taken me a good deal of hunting on the web to find the particular wine tasting, so it did actually save me time.
Since January, the site’s traffic has grown from 50,000 unique visitors to 500,000 in July. Goby has also launched apps for the iPhone, iPad, and Android. In the future, Goby plans to add more social functionality to the search engine, giving users the ability to recommend activities to friends on social networks. The new funding will be used for product development and marketing efforts.
Goby (GO-be) is a new search engine that’s all about finding fun ways to spend your free time, from a weekend to a week off. Whether you’re looking for the perfect bed & breakfast for a romantic getaway, a fresh hiking trail to tackle, a cool new museum to visit with the kids or a live show to check out this weekend, create your next adventure with Goby!
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
San Francisco, CA
Berlin, Germany
Boston, MA
