Tuesday, November 09, 2010

Vinod Khosla's Entry Into New York City

Vinod KhoslaImage via Wikipedia
AllThingsD: Khosla Wins the Bidding War for GroupMe, New York’s Startup of the Moment GroupMe, a New York startup that lets users send group text messages to to their cell phones, didn’t exist in April. Now it’s worth about $35 million..... Original investors including First Round Capital, Betaworks, Lerer Ventures and Ron Conway’s SV Angel, who put some $850,000 into the company earlier this year, are all slated to invest again. ..... a bidding war for the right to fund GroupMe broke out in the past few weeks. The company ended up with multiple term sheets to pick from before signing with Khosla Monday. ..... GroupMe works on any run of the mill “dumbphone”, and part of the company’s pitch is that salt of the earth folks (Church groups! Hunters!) have been using it since it opened up in August. ..... Hecht and Martocci left jobs at very red-hot startups — Tumblr and Gilt Groupe, respectively ..... The two formally hatched their plan at TechCrunch’s Disrupt Hack Day event in May. .... what investors are really hoping for, at least right now, is that GroupMe follows the same trajectory of another zero-to-hero New York startup — Foursquare. It’s worth nothing that Khosla tried very hard to fund that company’s last round, but missed out.

It is possible Vinod Khosla has other investements in New York, but I am not aware. I know he tried to get into FourSquare. But this GroupMe investment is noteworthy.

If you think about it, GroupOn and the clones are inventing in the inbox space. GroupMe is inventing in the text message space. Who knew your inbox was worth billions of dollars? I'd like a patent on that. What? The inbox.

I personally am very interested in the microfinance fund Khosla is working to set up as we speak. And so Khosla's investment in GroupMe is a very good sign.
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