Kevin Rose’s mobile lab, Milk, has a new investor: Google Ventures. The startup raised $1.5 million in a seed round last April from investors including Chris Sacca, Evan Williams, Dave Morin, Joshua Schachter, Ron Conway, Chamath Palihapitiya, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, First Round Capital, and True Ventures. The total amount now raised in the seed is $1.7 million.
“We started talking to Google after we closed our round,” says Rose, “but decided to open it up for them as they’ve been adding a ton of value right away.”
Google Maps is a big part of Milk’s first mobile app, Oink. And Rose wants to build in more Google technology in future updates.
Oink lets people rate and discover things in the places around them. It is a first step at creating a directory and recommendation system for things in the physical world. When it launched last week, Rose gave me a demo, which you can watch below.