Frengo Raises $5.7 Million Series A Round
Duncan Riley
20 comments »
Redwood City based Frengo, a mobile social networking startup targeting the growing SMS/ TXT market, have completed Series A funding of $5.7 million. The founding round was led by Trilogy Equity Partners, a firm led by John Stanton, the former T-Mobile USA and Western Wireless Chief Executive, and completed by Khosla Ventures and Index Ventures, both of which provided capital in the initial round of $2.3 million for Frengo in December 2006.
Frengo offers games and services via SMS and MMS. Games typically revolve around Sports or Entertainment and involve competing via phone against friends or other contacts. Frengo’s social networking tools allow user creation of polls, bulletins and quizzes that are sent out and completed via text messaging.
Existing partnerships for the company include a deal with Boost Mobile centered around the NCAA tournament with live wagering of points on games.
CEO Mahi de Silva, formerly with Verisign, has said that the aim of Frengo was to broaden the scope of mobile phone usage to include ‘one-to-many’ interactions; “supporting everyone’s basic desire to relate to other people in a social environment” and that the service was aimed at a core 16-28 year old demographic.
Frengo also operates in the often volitile MySpace service sector, having launched a TXT to MySpace service in February this year.
The company competes in an increasingly competitive marketplace, with SMS centered services such as Twitter rapidly gaining acceptance across the broader field of consumers, although as an idea Frengo is trying to take the existing social networking concepts of Twitter to another level of interactivity. The only question is whether the market is ready for it.
I have tried to register with my Moscow phone. It looks like it doesn’t work in here. It would be great to have one, though. Hopefully, in several months we should have a copycat of this service since we have ones of Linkedin, Classmates, etc.
What’s with the SQL queries at the bottom of their homepage?
“Frengo is trying to take the existing social networking concepts of Twitter to another level of interactivity. The only question is whether the market is ready for it.”
Thats actually the only question. other than sms, no app has really gained mass acceptance on the cell phone. one reason why twitter caught on.
this is amazing
back in 2000 working in Orange Israel we used to play with the thought that SMS is so obsolete and that 3G will one replace this cripple technology.
It is a mystery to me why they invested in this company and how it is different then any other one that is already out there.
SMS - WEB 2.0 ???
hi
this web site is nice send me latest software to download video of youtube, dailymotion
So I read these articles about start-ups getting $5M - $10M - $20M worth of funding.
What exactly are they spending this money on?
Would anybody have a simple breakdown of the percentage of spend, i.e. 20% development 30% marketing…
Just curious!!
It’s interesting how one comment mentions the market not being ready, and the next one talks about how it’s outdated.
The U.S. in 2007 is not Israel in 2000. Investors are putting money in, because they will make money on their investment.
I have an SMS technology and mobile marketing company that gets small business into this technology quickly and inexpensively. The problem we have is that they don’t understand the technology. Consumers are using text messaging, but business owners don’t know it exists.
What was being done on the other side of the world has no relevance. It is growing here and that’s a fact. SMS works on every phone. The same can’t be said for WAP, Video, Audio and other mobile technologies.
Investors invest in what will make them more money (and by the way, we are looking for investors).
Greg Harris
http://www.mobilemarketing.net
The community in your pocket (aka mobile SN) business model will change the way businesses compete. I think the shortage of mobile device programmer will open a slew of opportunities for those types of programmers. I think that Java will be the language to lead the revolution of mobile SN.
What do others think?
I am not exactly sure where they can go at this stage of the game. Interesting to see that there are people out there with money that are still willing to take risk with such a not new idea.
-SB
I would object -
out of the 200 people I know / talk to everyday -
- maybe 4 have phones actually use their cell phone for games
@ #3 fountain - Are you kidding? Twitter does not have acceptance. Twitter is not a particularly useful service and outside of the echosphere, no one cares about it. I would venture to guess that 95%+ of the TechCrunch readership knows about Twitter but has no desire to adopt it. It doesn’t add much value to our daily lives nor does it solve any pressing needs. Most people don’t care to announce their outfit for the day to all of their friends.
@ #6 George - Any consumer-focused start-up should think about dedicating a significant portion of their funding to (a) product development, (b) marketing, and (c) human resource acquisition. My guess is that the product development costs will be quite high here given that developing for cell phones is more expensive than developing for the web.
@ #10 pallet jack - How old are the people you know? Your and my friends don’t play games on their cell phone (well except Brickbreaker on your Blackberry while on the subway where you can’t get internet and email). Pre-teens and teenagers play a lot of games on their phones and US teenagers are taking the lead of teenagers in Asia and Europe by doing more things on their cell phones.
Overall, Frengo seems like a decent idea but I’d guess a lot of this money will have to go into marketing. For every Facebook, there are 10,000 failed “social networks.” Twitter is one of them. I’m not the first to call it, but Twitter is Dead.
as a consumer i wouldn’t say twitter is dead. two months ago i was like “ya RIGHT like anyone will use this” then now i’m like “twitter me this!”
some people get it. it’s like these mobile apps tho– just takes a minute for us to catch up.
@ cw - we’re all consumers. It’s easy to say “Oh I would use this so everyone will.” Saying “some people get it” is the easiest and worst argument in favor of crappy new tech products.
Most people don’t get it and don’t need to. Twitter does not solve a real problem or meet a real need.
Welcome to TechCrunch, Duncan! I hadn’t noticed your posts here yet but I hope you have a good time.
hi jay. i’ve been waiting for your twitter blog post. how are you?
i just meant ‘as a consumer’ vice ‘as a technology enthusiast’ or ‘as an investor’ or ‘as a tech blogger who follows every market trend and knows all about the internet’
just as an average person who follows some of the trends but dismisses most of them, i like what twitter can do for me. the widget solves my ‘problem’ with needing to let anyone know what’s going on at any moment. it definitely solves my problem of keeping my crew updated on things happening here.
it’s clean. it’s simple. it works for me. and some others. no big deal.
also: i love the poll function on frengo. interactive and simple. and fun!
cw - Fair point. I think it Twitter can morph to the point that it can have some real functionality from not just a consumer perspective, but a business perspective (e.g. the Nextel-userbase which uses walkie-talkie technology), it could get interesting.
I’ve been busy at my own start-up. The Twitter post will have to wait till I’ve thought it out a bit and incorporated your point.
I think that it is a mistake to simply try and leverage web-style applications on to mobile phones and call it a “product.” While adoption is more difficult, there is infinitely more function in applications for cell phones that operate outside of a browser and are on the phone itself. Building something like that and leveraging SMS and push functionality could lead to a variety of useful mobile products both in business and “friend” spaces.
its a cool concept. but i have a feeling other web/mobile social style sites/services are going to be better.
Not sure if this one will stick.
@ #11 Jay - if you can, could you list as many of the ‘10,000 failed social networks’ as you can?