Apptentive, which offers tools to mobile app developers to solicit in-app feedback from users, has scored $1.2 million in seed funding from Founder’s Co-Op, Google Ventures, Social Leverage, Golden Venture Partners, along with some of Seattle’s leading angel investors. The startup, whose founders include alumni from Microsoft, Yahoo!, Apple, and Greystripe, says it will use the injection of capital to further product development and build out its operations.
Apptentive enables iOS and Android app developers to integrate customer feedback right inside their apps, rather than trying to communicate with users solely via app store reviews, social media and direct contact. With a few lines of code, developers can hook into Apptentive’s SDK/service to add a new customer feedback and communication channel, including support for things like conducting in-app research using surveys, and initiating conversations directly with users, all of which it is claimed leads to higher app store ratings and increased customer retention — and it certainly makes sense to have all of this going on within the app itself, at the very moment an app publisher already has the user’s attention.
To date, Apptentive, which recently graduated from the Seattle accelerator TechStars, claims “hundreds of customers” including Yahoo!, Urbanspoon and Savings.com.
Along with an impressive list of institutional investors, the list of angels also joining today’s round includes Mike McSherry of Swype; Dan Shapiro of Sparkbuy; Geoff Entress, a board member at Big Fish Games; and Gaylord Kellogg, an early investor in Amazon and Aquantive.
Apptentive creates in-app feedback tools, enabling developers to easily engage customers for positive ratings, feedback and customer research. The team, informed by their experiences at Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Apple, built their MVP in early 2011 and received enthusiastic feedback in its first few months from developers who were introduced to it at WWDC. Since that time, the team has grown, adding design and Android expertise and fleshing out capabilities that have measurably improved the ratings and reviews for apps...
Founders’ Co-op, based in Seattle, Washington, is a seed-stage fund that helps extraordinary founding teams located outside the Bay Area build companies that the best VC firms in the world want to back. The fund GPs – who also lead and manage TechStars Seattle – scout “secondary” innovation markets (i.e., everywhere but the Bay Area, with a particular focus on the Pacific Northwest) for extraordinary founders with the skills, insight and drive to build big, valuable companies in both Enterprise...
Social Leverage LLC is a partnership that invests in exceptional entrepreneurs in the technology space. We partner with promising companies, bringing our own entrepreneurial expertise, relationships, and marketing experience to the fore. Our portfolio companies benefit from our hands on involvement in all stages of development. More pointedly, social leverage is about leveraging our extensive network of industry relationships and expertise to help grow great companies and build great products. Investment Criteria With offices on both the West and East coasts,...
Golden Venture Partners is a mobile focused seed and early stage venture capital fund based in Toronto. They provide early stage funding and mentorship to young companies that leverage the massive potential of mobile products and services. Golden Venture Partners was created as a response to the unparalleled growth in the mobile marketplace and the dramatic changes in how companies are created, financed and acquired. With the costs of creating valuable technology declining significantly from ten years ago, there...
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