Mobile Retail Firm shopkick Announces $15 Million in Series B Funding, Led by Greylock Partners

PALO ALTO, Calif., July 14 /PRNewswire/ -- shopkick (www.shopkick.com), the Silicon Valley-based "mobile meets retail" startup, today announced that the company has raised $15 million in Series B financing led by Greylock Partners. Reid Hoffman, co-founder and executive chairman at LinkedIn, and investor in Facebook and Zynga, takes his first full board seat in any investment as a Greylock Partner. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), Citi Growth Ventures & Innovation Group, and Silicon Valley angel investor SV Angel, led by Ron Conway, also participated in the round, which comes exactly one year after shopkick launched the company and closed its $5 million Series A funding from KPCB's iFund and Hoffman, who then invested as an individual.

"Location-based apps at the intersection of physical retail stores and smartphones are the next big opportunity in mobile.  shopkick has created an extraordinary model for consumers, retailers and brands where everyone wins," said Reid Hoffman. "shopkick will catapult location technology forward, turning offline stores into interactive worlds, and offering retailers and brands the first marketing vehicle that is entirely performance- and location-based."

"To have Reid and Greylock on board for the long haul is the best birthday present we could dream of at shopkick," said shopkick Co-Founder and CEO Cyriac Roeding.  "The new funding allows us to focus 100 percent of our resources on building an amazing product, expanding our partnerships with retailers and brands, and with all that, help to dramatically improve shopping for consumers in the physical retail world."

shopkick will use the funding to further enhance its location-based shopping capabilities and accelerate partnership development – just in time for the release of its prime mobile retail app, shopkick, due for release this summer.

"shopkick has achieved an impressive list of milestones in a short time: signed substantial partnerships with blue-chip retailers and brands like Best Buy, Macy's, Citi, Procter & Gamble and Kraft Foods; achieved significant consumer product adoption with their first app; and built a unique technology," said Matt Murphy, Partner at KPCB.  "The company is poised to deliver on the promise of location-based shopping: providing real world value and utility to both businesses and consumers."

shopkick's first mobile app, CauseWorld, helped prove the utility of location-based mobile technology in the shopping world. CauseWorld allows users to earn real money just by visiting a store or restaurant, and then donate the value to charity on behalf of sponsors. Since its December 2009 launch, CauseWorld has been one of the fastest growing and largest mobile retail applications in both the iPhone App Store and Google Android Market, downloaded more than 550,000 times in 5 months. CauseWorld ranked among the top 10 most popular downloads in two categories on the iPhone App Store.

Since launching in December 2009, CauseWorld users, in conjunction with partners Citi, Kraft Foods and Procter & Gamble, have helped to:

• Provide 300,000 meals to people in the U.S.
• Plant 80,000 trees
• Donate 30,000 books for children
• Offset 4 million pounds of carbon
• Provide 35 million liters of clean water in developing countries
• Provide $100,000 to Haiti earthquake victims through the American Red Cross

About shopkick (www.shopkick.com)

shopkick is a new Palo Alto-based startup funded by Kleiner Perkins's iFund, Greylock Partners and Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, and investor in Facebook and Zynga. shopkick, Inc. brings the power of the mobile internet to the retail experience.  shopkick launched its mobile application CauseWorld in the United States in December 2009, in partnership with Citi, Kraft Foods and Procter & Gamble.

SOURCE shopkick

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