Various German media outlets are reporting that Hollywood star Ashton Kutcher, has invested once again in a startup in Berlin, after doing so withSoundCloud and Amen. What is it with Ashton and Berlin? Post-Demi, is he planning to move or something?
Call it Airbnb for what you do at a place, not just where you sleep, The lucky winner of his humungous Twitter attention now will be Gidsy, which is a community marketplace for authentic travel experiences not unlike SideTour, Vayable or perhaps MyGuidie.
We’ve now exclusively confirmed that this is a $1.4 million seed Investment from Sunstone Capital, along with Index Ventures, Werner Vogels (of Amazon), Peter Read (UK) and the aforementioned Kutcher. The new investors join Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss from Soundcloud, Matt Stinchcomb from Etsy, Felix Petersen from Amen and ‘investor of the year’ at The Europas Awards, Christophe Maire, who provided the company’s early financing.
Launched in Berlin in November last year, the startup has now extended its platform to New York and Amsterdam. The fresh capital will be used to fuel the startup’s worldwide expansion – to whit, Gidsy will launch in San Francisco and London over the next two weeks.
Edial Dekker, the CEO of Gidsy says “the feedback and activities organized on Gidsy have surpassed all our expectations”, so they must be seeing decent traction. Floris Dekker, Chief Product Officer and co-founder. says they want to be the “Lonely Planet 2.0″.
Nikolaj Nyholm, Partner at Sunstone Capital says “Gidsy is great proof of the power of community marketplaces.”
Perhaps it’s also proof of the power of Berlin to attract high profile investors right now.
No comments:
Post a Comment