I’m not sure exactly what MOBshop (the company name is Cross-Platform Corp. but will likely change) co-founder Cyriac Roeding is up to, but he’s convinced some very serious people to invest time and money into his idea. And he has put together a killer core founding team.
The company has raised $2.5 million in an initial round of financing from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and entrepreneur/angel investor Reid Hoffman. Hoffman also joined the board of directors of the company, and Kleiner actually added two board members: Matt Murphy and Aileen Lee. It’s rare for a fund to spend two partners’ time on a single investment. And Hoffman has said he rarely invests in startups any longer, let alone taking the time to sit on the board. Clearly, they think there is something under the hood at the secretive MOBshop.
But just what that something is, we don’t know. Roeding, a German-born entrepreneur and former EVP of CBS Mobile, most recently did a stint as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Kleiner. He will only say that the company will hit the intersection of mobile and physical worlds. That doesn’t really narrow things down much, but Roeding says that it’s still way too early to start talking about the product. They don’t even have a website up yet. Hoffman described the project to me as ” extraordinarily interesting” but wouldn’t go into any further detail at all. He’s not generally one to gush, so I assume he’s genuinely impressed.
Roeding has also put together a strong core team. His co-founder is Jeff Sellinger took over CBS Mobile after Roeding left to join Kleiner. He has also pulled senior people from Loopt (Evan Tana) and Six Apart (Aaron Emigh) to complete the team
One thing the company is being very vocal about is hiring. “Right now we’re looking for a small group of the Valley’s best and brightest developers for the iPhone, other smartphones, and backend systems,” Roeding says. Email resumes to makecontact@mobshop.net.
Update (December 2009): The company will launch with the name Shopkick.