Social network service Pelago secures $15 million

Pelago, Inc., creators of the new social networking and discovery service, Whrrl, announced today that the company has secured $15 million in a Series B financing round. The funds will be used for strategic technology investments and partnerships to continue the service’s rapid deployment across North America and into new overseas markets.

Deutsche Telekom’s venture capital arm, T-Mobile Venture Fund, led the round and was joined by the corporate venture arm of Reliance ADA Group, Reliance Technology Ventures Ltd. (RTVL), and Palo Alto-based DAG Ventures. Original investors in Pelago’s 2006 $7.4M Series A round, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, Trilogy Equity Partners and Bezos Expeditions, also participated in the new round.

T-Mobile Venture Fund and RTVL provide Pelago with unmatched mobile and wireless leadership, as well as an essential foundation in global technology and communications expertise.

With the funding, Stephan Noll, Managing Director, T-Mobile Venture Fund will take a seat on the Pelago board of directors. “Mobile Communication networks and the improvements of LBS functionalities have created an extraordinary market dynamic for Pelago. Whrrl offers users an entirely new form of social discovery and communication services. Pelago ideally captures this opportunity and has created a truly unique mobile social experience.”

Jeff Holden, CEO and co-founder of Pelago, said, “This high level of support is validation of the Whrrl service and its widespread consumer appeal to mobile users everywhere. T-Mobile’s value as a partner in the wireless space, and the global potential both T-Mobile and RTVL bring to the company, along with the technology leadership of DAG Ventures and the continued support of each of our original investors, have us looking ahead with great enthusiasm.”

At the nexus of social networking, local discovery and user-generated content, Whrrl combines mapping and micro-blogging technology into a unique social discovery experience. It enables users to share their activities and locations in real-time, and unlike any other existing service, offers a powerful new discovery experience by allowing users to see the places and events that their friends think are interesting. In this way, Whrrl makes a person’s social network valuable in a completely new way.

After a user opts-in to the service, the Whrrl experience captures a person’s activities, cataloging an individual history of places visited and events attended through icons pinpointed on Whrrl’s built-in mapping application. Whrrl users and their friends can then rate, review, and comment on these places and events. This user feedback then determines how a location or event is represented on the Whrrl map – either as a positively charged green icon or negatively charged red icon.

Whether accessed via the Web or mobile device, Whrrl provides users with an entirely new discovery pathway for finding and sharing local knowledge with friends and communities. Currently, the Whrrl service is available nationally in the U.S. with an information database detailing millions of businesses and events across the country.

About Pelago
Pelago, Inc. is an early-stage company based in Seattle developing a new generation of consumer experiences based on breakthrough technology, including Whrrl, a new mobile and web-based service at the intersection of social networking and local discovery. Pelago was founded by former senior executives from Amazon.com and is backed by leading venture capital firms from the U.S., Europe and India.