Tetrapod Software, a Seattle-area startup led by professional poker veteran Phil Gordon, has landed $2 million in fresh seed funding as it develops a new enterprise collaboration service called Chatbox. With the latest funding, Gordon says the company has raised a total of $2.35 million this year.
Investors in the seed round include former Yahoo president Sue Decker, a board member for companies including Berkshire Hathaway, Costco and Intel; Paypal veteran Scott Banister; Gotham Capital principal Robert Goldstein; Rick Rudman of Vocus; Michael Bronfein of RemediRX; and Mattias Westman of Prosperity Capital.
Goldstein and Doug Miller, a Seattleite who is chief revenue officer for LivingSocial, are both joining the company’s board, Gordon confirmed via email. The company has six employees currently, and Gordon says he expects to announce more key engineering and executive leadership hires in early 2015.
Gordon’s previous company, Jawfish Games, closed earlier this year after a planned $20 million acquisition of Jawfish by an unnamed company fell through. The Tetrapod site notes that the Tetrapod name was chosen because it’s a “natural evolutionary step just up from a Jawfish.”
Gordon, a startup veteran and computer scientist, is the CEO of Tetrapod. He’s a familiar character in the world of professional poker — an accomplished tournament player, author and former commentator on Bravo’s popular “Celebrity Poker Showdown” television show.
Chatbox, which has yet to officially launch, will include the ability to quickly activate an online collaboration and chat session as an offshoot to an email thread.
The seed round for Tetrapod was disclosed in a regulatory filing this week (listing a higher total as a result of the conversion of convertible notes). The Puget Sound Business Journal reported on the funding for Tetrapod earlier this week.
