Dopplr Receives Funding from Premier International Team: Varsavsky, Ito, Hoffman and Klein invest in online social-travel service
We’re very happy to announce that Dopplr has secured early-stage financing. Having this international group of active Dopplr users now joining us as strategic investors is tremendously exciting. Here’s the release:
Dopplr Receives Funding from Premier International Team: Varsavsky, Ito, Hoffman and Klein invest in online social-travel service
Helsinki, Finland – September 4, 2007 – Dopplr, the online social service for frequent world travellers, has secured early-stage financing from an international group of experienced Internet investors.
The investors are Martin Varsavsky, Joichi Ito, Reid Hoffman and The Accelerator Group led by Saul Klein. This international team—frequent travellers who themselves use Dopplr—has separately made previous investments in many successful Internet companies, including Last.fm, Joost, FON, LinkedIn, Flickr, Technorati, Wikia, Xing, Stardoll, Six Apart and Netvibes.
“We’re gratified that so many world travellers have already found value in Dopplr,” said Lisa Sounio, CEO of Dopplr. “Having this international group of active Dopplr users now joining us as strategic investors is tremendously exciting. Martin, Saul, Joichi and Reid have a great sense of business, technology, design and travel.”
Investor Martin Varsavsky said: “We chose to invest in Dopplr because of the strong team and the simple execution of a great idea. Dopplr is like the iPod of social networks. It is very valuable to know where your friends and colleagues will be and where in the world you will meet them next. This is the one thing that Dopplr does really well.”
How does Dopplr work? Dopplr lets you, via an invitation system, share your future travel plans with a group of trusted fellow travellers whom you have chosen. It also reminds you of friends and colleagues who live in the cities you’re planning to visit. For example, Dopplr might tell you that three of your trusted friends and colleagues will be in Barcelona when you are there next.
The Guardian newspaper recently chose Dopplr as one of 10 independent Internet companies to watch. Dopplr was also highlighted, alongside Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo and Digg, as a useful Web service at the recent Nokia launch of the Ovi services brand in London.
About Dopplr
Dopplr is an online service for frequent travellers. It was created by an international team of world travellers. Dopplr lets you share your future travel plans with a group of trusted fellow travellers whom you have chosen. It also reminds you of friends and colleagues who live in the cities you’re planning to visit. In general, people will find Dopplr valuable if they travel more than five times a year or have friends who do as well.
Currently open by invitation only, Dopplr has spread quickly. To date, Dopplr travellers have shared over 110 million kilometers (70 million miles) of trips to over 2000 cities around the world with their close friends and colleagues.
Dopplr’s founders are: Lisa Sounio, chief executive officer; Matt Biddulph, chief technology officer; Matt Jones, design director; and Dan Gillmor, founding traveller. Marko Ahtisaari is a founding investor.
About the Investors
Martin Varsavsky: The Argentine/Spanish entrepreneur has founded seven companies in the past 20 years. They include Jazztel Telecomunicaciones, Spain’s second largest publicly traded telecom operator, and Ya.com, Spain’s third largest internet web site/DSL provider that includes the second largest Spanish language web agency www.viajar.com. His current venture is FON, founded in November in 2005, a community-empowered company dedicated to building the world’s largest global WiFi network in a bottom-up way; FON’s partners include Skype, eBay and Google. Martin also works in a variety of nonprofit activities, including his management of the Varsavsky Foundation best known as founder of two large educational projects in Latin America, Educ.ar (Argentina) and EducarChile (Chile) and the Safe Democracy Foundation.
Joichi Ito: Another longtime Internet entrepreneur, Joichi Ito is a co-founder and board member of Digital Garage and the CEO of Neoteny. He is the Chairman of Creative Commons. He is on the board of Technorati and helps run Technorati Japan. He is the Chairman of Six Apart Japan, the weblog software company. He is the board of a number of non-profit organizations the Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and WITNESS. He has created numerous Internet companies including PSINet Japan and Infoseek Japan. He has served and continues to serve on numerous Japanese central as well as local government committees and boards, advising the government on IT, privacy and computer security related issues.
Reid Hoffman: The founder of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social networking service with millions of active users, Reid is now chairman and president, products, driving product and business strategy. Before founding LinkedIn he was Executive Vice President of PayPal, which eBay purchased for $1.5 billion in 2002. Reid also has held management roles in large technology companies, including Fujitsu Software Corporation and Apple. He’s invested in numerous Internet startups, with a focus on consumer-oriented companies, and is on the board of directors at SixApart and the Mozilla Corporation.
Saul Klein: Currently living in London, where he is a venture partner with Index Ventures, Saul has started or had a major hand in many Internet and technology ventures. They include Skype, where he was global vice president of marketing and e-commerce; Video Island, where he was CEO, recently merged with LoveFilm to become Europe’s leading online DVD rental and movie download service. He was also a founding partner of The Accelerator Group, where he was an active seed investor in both US and European start-ups including Moo.com, SpotRunner, Edgeio, Daylife, Stardoll and Last.fm. Saul held management positions at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond within the Web Platform Services Group; served as the senior vice president for Firefly Network (acquired by Microsoft), and was director of digital communication at WPP’s Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide. He currently serves on the board of directors of bridges.org, an international non-profit which works to promote the effective use of information and communications technology in developing countries.
For Journalists:
If you have questions, please contact us at press at dopplr dot com. (If you want an invite to Dopplr, to try it out for yourself, just ask.)
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[…] travel based social network Dopplr has received a first round of funding. In what CEO Lisa Sounio describes as a strategic investment, Dopplr users and entrepreneurs Martin […]
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Congrats to everyone at Dopplr — and to the investors, who have made a great choice. Best wishes!
Woop! Congrats guys!
[…] Reid Hoffman is on a (complicated) Web 2.0 social networking roll: Founder of LinkedIn, billed as “the world’s largest and most powerful professional network,” AND investor in Mark Zuckerberg’s “social utility” Facebook, a direct LinkedIn competitor, and NOW, investor in Dopplr, a would be ‘who needs Facebook to share travel plans’ social g… […]
[…] CEO Lisa Sounio announced that the online social service for frequent world travelers has secured early-stage […]
Congrats guys, just saw the news. Love the service, best of luck to you guys in taking it to the next level.
[…] which is building a travel social network, is announcing early stage funding today. The undisclosed amount comes from Martin Varsavsky, Joi Ito, Reid […]
[…] an invite-only social network for sharing travel plans with friends, has announced early-stage financing of an undisclosed amount from Martin Varsavsky, Joichi Ito, Reid Hoffman and […]
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[…] an invite-only social network for sharing travel plans with friends, has announced early-stage financing of an undisclosed amount from Martin Varsavsky, Joichi Ito, Reid Hoffman and […]
[…] an invite-only social network for sharing travel plans with friends, has announced early-stage financing of an undisclosed amount from Martin Varsavsky, Joichi Ito, Reid Hoffman and […]
[…] an invite-only social network for sharing travel plans with friends, has announced early-stage financing of an undisclosed amount from Martin Varsavsky, Joichi Ito, Reid Hoffman and […]
Hey congrats guys! Great news — and great use of open technology! I’m excited to see what you guys come up with next — and how you develop your API for service cross-pollination.
[…] an invite-only social network for sharing travel plans with friends, has announced early-stage financing of an undisclosed amount from Martin Varsavsky, Joichi Ito, Reid Hoffman and […]
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I see that you are offering beta invites! May I have one, please?
[…] which is building a travel social network, is announcing early stage funding today. The undisclosed amount comes from Martin Varsavsky, Joi Ito, Reid […]
[…] Blog: Dopplr Receives Funding from Premier International Team: Varsavsky, Ito, Hoffman and Klein invest in… No Comments so far Leave a comment RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI […]
Well done Dopplrs!
[…] an invite-only social network for sharing travel plans with friends, has announced early-stage financing of an undisclosed amount from Martin Varsavsky, Joichi Ito, Reid Hoffman and […]
[…] an invite-only social network for sharing travel plans with friends, has announced early-stage financing of an undisclosed amount from Martin Varsavsky, Joichi Ito, Reid Hoffman and […]
[…] Dopplr Blog » Dopplr Receives Funding from Premier International Team: Varsavsky, Ito, Hoffman and … “Dopplr is like the iPod of social networks.” – Now that’s a great sound-bite. Congrats to the Dopplr team for getting funded. (tags: Dopplr travel social socialnetworking socialsoftware funding) […]
[…] an invite-only social network for sharing travel plans with friends, has announced early-stage financing of an undisclosed amount from Martin Varsavsky, Joichi Ito, Reid Hoffman and […]
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[…] Dopplr Receives Funding from Premier International Team: Varsavsky, Ito, Hoffman and Klein invest in online social-travel service. Helsinki, Finland – September 4, 2007 – Dopplr, the online social service for frequent world travellers, … …more […]
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[…] Dopplr notificou ontem que recebeu um Funding por parte de Martin Varsavsky, Ito, Hoffman e Klein, não […]
[…] sociales, que se me ocurrió tras ver la fuerte subida de Dopplr a lo largo del día siguiendo el anuncio de su ronda de financiación y la apertura de su beta privada, y un twitt de Fernando Polo en el que comentaba que “él ya […]
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[…] on startups and entrepreneurs - no such thing around. For example, which Finnish blog covered the seed financing of Dopplr (yes, it’s a Finnish startup) by world known VCs like Martin Varsavsky and Joi […]
[…] Dopplr, the online social service for frequent world travellers, has secured early-stage financing from an international group of experienced Internet investors… The investors are Martin Varsavsky, Joichi Ito, Reid Hoffman and The Accelerator Group led by Saul Klein.—Dopplr Receives Funding […]
[…] già parlato in precedenza che permette di comunicare al mondo intero i propri spostamenti, ha ricevuto una grossa “sponsorizzazione” da una join venture fatta da investitori […]
[…] sociales, que se me ocurrió tras ver la fuerte subida de Dopplr a lo largo del día siguiendo el anuncio de su ronda de financiación y la apertura de su beta privada, y un twitt de Fernando Polo en el que comentaba que “él ya no […]
[…] Dopplr gets funding Dopplr is a travel based social networking site, receives funding of an undisclosed amount. Using Dopplr, I can find out which one of my friends are traveling to a city, when they are going, […]
congrats to Lisa, Marko & the early BA !
[…] frequently used Dopplr when I was in Europe due to all the traveling but hardly use it these days. Dopplr’s blog did not mention the amount they received. They’re still invite-only but ping me if […]
Congrats guys, I wish you all the best. Hope to be travelling a lot so I can keep my network alive ;)
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[…] not referencing the backed-by-four-high-profile-investors travel community Dopplr, but the podcast aggregator for Windows Doppler, which was created over 3 […]
[…] startup getting a lot of buzz by the travelling tech crowd is Dopplr. Dopplr also recently got some funding by some notable users of the application.Dopplr allows you to indicate the locations you are going […]
[…] Since Dopplr launched their beta earlier this year, the service has been found very useful by many ‘frequent travellers’. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, recently named Dopplr his “favorite non-wiki website” in The New York Times Sunday Magazine. The Guardian newspaper recently chose Dopplr as one of 10 independent Internet companies to watch. The company got quickly backed by a premier international group of investors. […]
[…] Dopplr hat sehr schnell einigen Erfolg gehabt. Nicht nur eine solide Finanzierung sondern auch eine recht gute Publicity. Rudy dazu: Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, recently named Dopplr his “favorite non-wiki website” in The New York Times Sunday Magazine. The Guardian newspaper recently chose Dopplr as one of 10 independent Internet companies to watch. The company got quickly backed by a premier international group of investors. […]
[…] October 2007 Uncategorized I’m not referencing the backed-by-four-high-profile-investors travel community Dopplr, but the podcast aggregator for Windows Doppler, which was created over 3 […]
[…] are still finalising the design and layout, but alerting early testers on the site. The startup won early stage funding in December from a gaggle Web names including Martin Varsavsky, Joichi Ito, Reid Hoffman and The […]
I want to invest… what is the ticker symbol for this company?
[…] an invite-only social network for sharing travel plans with friends, has announced early-stage financing of an undisclosed amount from Martin Varsavsky, Joichi Ito, Reid Hoffman and […]