Virtual bar application company Shaker has closed a $15 million round of financing. The round was led by Menlo Ventures, Michael Arrington's CrunchFund, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors , Lady Gaga manager Troy Carter, and Pitango Venture Capital. This is Schmidt's fifth investment in an Israeli company.
Shaker won the TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield 2011 in San Francisco last month.
Shaker previously raised $3 million from Pitango and from investor Zaki Rakib. The company was founded in Israel, but recently opened a San Francisco office, which will be the new company headquarters.
In the new Uncrunched blog, Menlo Ventures Shervin Pishevar said, "I was blown away by talent of the Shaker team. I’ve been searching for many years for what only Shaker has accomplished. Shaker is going to touch and transform human connection and entertainment worldwide. Within a minute, I knew what I saw was the future. I had been looking for this for years."
Shaker's application creates an avatar that walks around a bar meeting new people. Shaker, which was founded by Ofer Rundstein, Yonatan Maor and Gad Maor, received publicity in Israel even before it won the TechCrunch contest. According to the founders, within three weeks, they had 80,000 users and were forced to close the app to new users following complaints of crowding in the virtual bars. Since then, the app has been reopened to new users, but there is still crowding in the Facebook "bars" from time to time.
The Shaker app allows users to meet people on the social network in a different way: it presents common interests between users who do not know each other, and in this way helps to break the ice and create topics that interest both users, like a friend they have in common, a favorite singer, etc. However, Shaker's founders say that it is not a Facebook dating application, but more of a place to flirt. TechCrunch called Shaker a mixture of Second Life and The Sims.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on October 10, 2011
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