RescueTime has pulled in an additional $250,000 in financing from existing investor True Ventures, money that the profitable Seattle startup will use to accelerate hiring and roll out new features. Total funding in the company now stands at $1.1 million.
RescueTime, an application that tracks how you spend time in front of a computer, has been profitable for the past 15 months. So, why the new cash infusion?
“Our growth hasn’t been quite where we would like it, so we had been considering a Series B to allow us to grow the team faster and accelerate the development of a number of features and ideas,” explains CEO Joe Hruska. “During this last year, True Ventures had expressed interest a number of times that they would like to put more money into RescueTime. We decided that raising a much smaller round made more sense at this time, and would give us the buffer cash in bank we needed to grow the team more rapidly than otherwise.”
The company currently employs four people, and recently hired Robby Macdonell of Zulily and Jobster as vice president of product development.
Hruska said that the business is doing very well, and they plan to roll out a new set of features in the first half of next year.
“We still need to grow the team, but we have the luxury of doing it slowly and can take the time to find the exact matches we need,” he said.
Started in 2008 by Tony Wright, RescueTime is a graduate of the tech incubator Y Combinator. Users of the service install an application on their computers, and then RescueTime tracks which software programs and Web sites individuals use or visit the most.
The service has been described as one’s “personal Big Brother,” helping people figure out how they are utilizing their time. On average, the company says that those who use the service save three hours and 54 minutes worth of productive time per week.
And the biggest time wasters — ugh, I mean distracting sites — on the Internet? That would include Facebook, Google/YouTube and Reddit. The company also recently found that its own team spent on average of 25 minutes per person doing online shopping last week.
The company’s Solo Pro subscription costs between $72 and $108 per year.
