Flywheel Gets $14.8 Million To Double Down On Bringing Tech To The World Of Taxi Drivers

Flywheel, the San Francisco-based company that operates the mobile and web taxi-hailing app formerly known as Cabulous, has raised $14.8 million in a new round of venture funding.

The round, which serves as Flywheel’s Series B, was led by new investor Craton Equity Partners as well as continuing participation from Series A investors RockPort Capital and Shasta Ventures. This brings the total amount invested into the company, which currently has around 30 staff, to about $25 million.

flywheelThe funding comes at an exciting time for the transportation space in general, as companies in the space tussle with traditional governmental regulators about how public and private transportation should work. Flywheel has operated on the safer side of the spectrum compared to companies such as Lyft, Sidecar, and Uber, as Flywheel only deals with fully licensed taxi cab drivers — there’s no peer-to-peer angle here, period. That may have meant slower growth in some markets, but Flywheel maintains that is model will prove to be the best as it’s playing the long game. And the fresh round of funding shows that there is a group of investors who are keen to be part of Flywheel’s model.

It’s a strong company in an interesting space, so we met up with Flywheel CEO Steve Humphreys to take the latest version of Flywheel’s app for a spin and to talk about the new funding and how it will steer the company’s future. Watch us talk about all of that — while riding in a Flywheel enabled taxi — in the video embedded above.