• Baydin Closes Its $375,000 Funding Round (In An UberCab, Per Our Suggestion)

    Jason Kincaid

    Jason Kincaid worked as a writer for TechCrunch from April 2008 through 2012. He grew up in Danville, California and later relocated to UCLA in Los Angeles, California, where he studied biology with a minor in ‘Society and Genetics’. You can reach him at jkincaid@gmail.com → Learn More

    Tuesday, April 5th, 2011


    Back in October we wrote about Baydin, a startup that managed to land some of its seed funding with some very unusual tactics: by giving Dave McClure a ride to his mechanic and pitching him along the way.

    McClure committed to invest by the end of the ride — and the startup has been working to close other investors (though more traditional means, presumably) since then. Today, it’s announcing that it’s closed its $375,000 seed funding round, with investors including Manu Kumar (K9 Ventures), David Cohen (TechStars), Peter Weck (Keepsy, SimplyHired), Meng Wong (Pobox), McClure, and Mike Simonoff.

    As a nod to our earlier post, in which Michael Arrington suggested McClure take an UberCab next time, Baydin asked Manu Kumar to sign their closing documents in… an UberCab.

    For those that aren’t familiar with it, Baydin develops software that makes your email inbox a little more tolerable. Their most popular product is Boomerang, which allows you to schedule certain email messages to send at some point in the future (in other words, you could write a slew of messages over the weekend, and automatically send them as the workweek kicks off Monday morning). You can also use the service to resend your important email messages to yourself as a reminder, in case you can’t act on an important message immediately. Boomerang is available for both Gmail and Outlook.

    The company’s second app is The Email Game, which, as the name suggests, adds some game mechanics to your inbox to help keep you motivated.

    Baydin will be presenting as part of 500 Startups’s Demo Day later this week.


    Company: Baydin
    Website: baydin.com
    Launch Date: January 2010
    Funding: $393k

    Baydin makes email management tools that help customers spend less time wrestling with email and more time doing meaningful work. Products by Baydin Boomerang for Gmail provides the same ability to receive a message when it is actually needed, as well as adding the ability to send an email at a scheduled time. Boomerang is also available for Outlook. The Email Game is the fastest, most fun way to manage your email. http://emailga.me Boomerang Calendar is a smart calendar assistant, built into Gmail...

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