SimpleGeo Locates $1.5 Million And Many Big Name Investors

Screen shot 2009-11-24 at 1.44.41 PMThere is a lot of buzz around SimpleGeo right now. The service, which participated in our RealTime CrunchUp earlier this month, also took home two prizes at the Under The Radar conference just prior to that. And that was a big deal for the company considering it won the audience award even though it’s not exactly the most consumer-oriented project. But people seem to understand that the location space is getting really hot right now, and SimpleGeo, which provides its geolocation infrastructure to other companies, offers one of the best models to capitalize on that. So it should be no surprise that they’ve attracted some big time investors.

SimpleGeo has just closed a $1.5 million seed round of funding, we’ve confirmed. This round, led by First Round Capital, also includes from Redpoint Ventures, Ron Conway, Kevin Rose, Chris Sacca, Joshua Schachter, David Cohen, Debbie Landa, Tim Ferriss, Shawn Fanning, Gary Vaynerchuk, David Lee, and Freestyle Capital. Yes, it’s basically a who’s who in angel investing that is on board now with SimpleGeo.

The two founders, Matt Galligan and Joe Stump, who are both based in Boulder, CO, used their time in San Francisco this month to close this new round. And the company is moving fast. Just a few weeks ago, the company raised a debt round to cover expenses as the company switched gears away from a previous focus on augmented reality gaming (which Galligan wrote about for us here). This new funding is being tacked on to that for its proper seed round.

SimpleGeo is not the only company working to provide an easy way for others to tap into the location craze. Another company on our geostream panel at the CrunchUp, GeoAPI, is doing something in a similar vein, but with a different approach.

SimpleGeo remains in beta for the time being.

Participants in its previous debt round include Joanna Shields (formerly Bebo), David Liu (formerly AOL), Ziv Navoth (formerly Bebo), Darius Contractor (Bebo), Ravi Narasimhan (Strategic Data Corp/NewsCorp), and Jason Knapp (Strategic Data Corp/NewsCorp). Needless to say, a lot of powerful people clearly want this company to succeed.