When Damon Cortesi and Aviel Ginzburg started their company in early 2010, they weren’t sure what direction it would take. They didn’t have a product, and the name of their venture, Untitled Startup, reflected the nebulous path they were taking.
Fast-forward more than 18 months, and now the eight-person company, known as Simply Measured, is inking deals with big companies like Levi’s, Edelman and Alaska Airlines — customers using the online service to track what’s being said on Facebook, Twitter and other social media channels.
To help fuel the next chapter for the company, Simply Measured just scored $750,000 in startup capital. Investors include Founder’s Co-op and Mark Sugarman of MHS Capital. (Sugarman, who sits on the board, is a former executive at VerticalNet and angel investor in iLike).
CEO Adam Schoenfeld declined to name other investors, but added that the syndicate includes an impressive slate of angels from both Seattle and outside region.
The company — which is planning to ramp up hiring and maintain its offices at Founder’s Co-op in South Lake Union — competes with services such as Bellevue-based Visible Technologies. Social media monitoring is a hot area right now, highlighted by the sale of Radian6 to Salesforce.com for as much as $326 million earlier this year.
Schoenfeld said that the company takes more of a “bottom up” and lightweight approach designed so that everyone in the organization can use it.
It plans to use some of the funds to expand into other areas of business intelligence. The software-as-a-service offering starts at $500 per month, with prices increasing based on how much data people use.
For Ginzburg, the new funding marks a significant milestone for the company.
“It has been a pretty amazing experience to go from Damon and I at Untitled Startup trying to figure out what direction we wanted to head in and what product we wanted to build,” Ginzburg tells GeekWire. “And to head from that stage to a company with a real business that generates real revenue with real customers has been a wild ride. It is a little bit humbling. It has been a lot of fun to get to the point that we are at.”
Total funding in Simply Measured now stands at $900,000.
