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03/09/12 | Uncategorized

2012 PITCH Startup Competition Finalist Kismet Announces Funding, New Features For SXSW

PITCH Competition finalist secures seed funding.
By Michelle Norgan (Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer, Kismet)

I’m excited to announce that Kismet, featured last month as a finalist of the Women 2.0 PITCH Startup Competition, has raised our seed round with investments from Triple Point Ventures, NEA, and an incredible list of angels including Shiva Rajaraman (Head of Consumer at YouTube), Steph Hannon (an early PM on Gmail), Roham Gharegozlou, and several others.

Kismet helps you meet new people in the real world. We’ve just unveiled some features that will make meeting new people even easier, especially this coming week at SXSW. These are in the newest version of Kismet which just went live in the iTunes app store last night.

First and foremost is a new “pop-up events” feature that lets users spontaneously create small group events where they can invite their friends, who can in turn invite their own friends. It’s much easier to meet new people in a group, and with the help of people you already know.

Next, we’ve added passive location sharing in addition to the existing check ins. If you choose, the app will run in the background and notify you when interesting people are nearby. You can also stick with the more active check in model, or use a combination of the two.

For SXSW, being able to check in to a specific party will be invaluable – it’s hard to meet people that are at another venue with a 30 minute wait to get in.

We’re giving our users total flexibility in how they want to share their location with others. We’ve also built in a “hide at home” feature to passive location that automatically detects your home and hides you whenever you visit it. You don’t have to remember to turn off the app when you’re at home if you want to keep it private–Kismet does it for you.

Finally, it’s SXSW and the Kismet team is in Austin this week, so what better way to celebrate our new features than with a round of drinks on us? Or how about several?

Throughout the festival, we’ll be announcing several pop up events from within Kismet. Simply find one of these events through the app, show up, and the drinks are on us. We may even have a few surprise guests.

We look forward to meeting you at SXSW! Get Kismet here.

Editor’s note: Kudos to the Kismet team for their press coverage in the New York Times today!.
Photo caption: Logan Campbell on Flickr.
About the guest blogger: Michelle Norgan is the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Kismet. Michelle was previously a founding team member at a social startup where she designed and launched the company’s Consumer Mobile and Web products. Michelle holds a BS from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.

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