Wishpot closes Series A!
Today we announced the closing of a Series A round led by two great early stage investors: Monster Venture Partners and H-Farm.
Here're some more info from our press release:
Wishpot announces Series A financing
Company funded by web innovators on two continents to accelerate growth Seattle – April 21, 2008 – Wishpot, the popular online social shopping community, announced the closing of a Series A investment round. The round, which added $1 million in funding, was led by Monster Venture Partners. Other investors in the round include H‐Farm, an Italian Internet development group, as well as existing
investors including Adrian Hanauer.
Founded in 2007, Wishpot has developed a hosted solution for tracking personal wish list entries across any website on the internet. The free product, which is currently in beta, has already become a popular web site for social shopping. The site is expected to undergo a series of important enhancements during mid 2008 and launch in foreign markets during the second half of 2008 and 2009.
Rob Monster, Managing Director of Monster Venture Partners, has joined Wishpot’s board of directors. “On the surface Wishpot is a consumer site that democratizes the online wish list across any site that sells products or services on the Internet. However, look a level deeper and you will see the power of being able to predict future demand in real‐time segmented by user attributes.”
“We’re very excited to have Rob’s team onboard. In the short term we’ve been working together, the team at Monster Venture Partners have already helped us establish relationships that will get us to the next level”. Says Max Ciccotosto, CEO and founder of Wishpot.
Wishpot is planning to use the funds to further enhance its vertical offerings, improve the Wishpot platform, increase the business development activities, and introduce business analytics for enterprise customers of the platform. Expanded adoption of the platform is an important growth priority. The Wishpot platform hosts a range of popular consumer needs, including registries for weddings, baby announcements, birthdays, and holidays. A user can add an item to a registry with a single click, similar to the way a user can “Digg” an article discovered on the Internet. Once a product has been added to a personal Wishpot, the user can also access Wishpot’s powerful features for comparison shopping, to solicit feedback, and get recommendations from a personal social shopping network.
About Wishpot
Wishpot, founded in 2006 out of Seattle by veterans of Microsoft, is a personal and social shopping utility that makes it easy to save, share and discover interesting products. Visit http://www.wishpot.com for more information.
About Monster Venture Partners
Monster Venture Partners (‘MVP’) is a new breed of early‐stage venture capital firm based in Seattle. MVP’s investment philosophy is to engage in a genuine hands‐on partnership with founders to jointly create value for all stakeholders. For larger opportunities, MVP co‐invests with leading investors from around the world, selecting from a universe of like‐minded investors who are able to add strategic value. MVP is focused on three primary verticals: marketing technology, consumer healthcare, and global consumer Internet.
About H‐Farm
H‐Farm was founded in 2005 to create and develop innovative technology and new media startups. Since its foundation H‐Farm tested many ideas at once and turned the best of them quickly into companies, attracting the human capital necessary to make them grow. H‐Farm works in different vertical industries, from mobile and Internet companies to 3D animation, IPTV, User Generated Content, Digital Billboard and Interactive Window companies. H‐Farm today is recognized in Italy as a unique place to seed finance a start‐up. Using design thinking, H‐Farm is developing a worldwide‐interconnected network of innovative technology and new media startups. H‐Farm is now starting to partner with leading venture capital firms and strategic investors to provide its companies with the resources to maximize their potential.


