Dopplr Announces Financing Round for Global Expansion
Today we’re announcing a new round of funding at Dopplr. We’re very excited about this news. For the details, here’s our press release in full:
International group led by Esther Dyson, Tyler Brûlé and Thomas Glocer invests in online service for sharing travel intentions
London and Helsinki, 16 September 2008 – Dopplr, the online service for smarter travel, has announced a second financing round from a group of prominent international investors — all users of the service. The funding will be used to expand the service globally from its strong base in Europe.
The new investors include Esther Dyson, Tyler Brûlé, Thomas Glocer, Yat Siu, Aditya dev Sood, Lars Hinrichs, Joshua Schachter, Brian Behlendorf, Ami Hasan, Daniel Sachs, Joshua Cooper Ramo, Kim Weckström, and Azeem Azhar. Saul Klein, who invested in this round, also invested in the previous round together with Martin Varsavsky, Reid Hoffman and Joichi Ito.
Lead investor Esther Dyson, a frequent traveller across four continents, recently discussed Dopplr and new Web business models in The Wall Street Journal: “I’m an individual with specific travel plans, which I intentionally make visible to my preferred vendors. […] Value is being created in users’ own walled gardens, which they will cultivate for themselves in real estate owned by the social networks. The new value creators are companies – like Facebook and Dopplr—that know how to build and support online communities.”
Intention sharing and brands
“Dopplr is leading the way in intention sharing services online. It is valuable to know where your trusted friends and colleagues will be, and where you could meet them next,” said Lisa Sounio, CEO of Dopplr. “Partner brands on Dopplr will also give you relevant information and offers tailored to you. For example, when you tell Dopplr your plans to go to Hong Kong, you might get the latest intelligence from Monocle and offers from boutique hotels picked by Mr and Mrs Smith.”
Dopplr users, the world’s most frequent travellers from over 190 countries, made on average more than 10 trips in the last year. This fall they will visit 5431 cities with the top destinations being London, New York, San Francisco, Paris and Berlin. Tokyo, Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai and Dubai are all in the top 50 Dopplr destination cities. When travellers tell Dopplr about their travel plans, two-thirds of them have not yet booked a hotel and half have not yet made any travel arrangements. (Source: Dopplr Fall Travel Outlook 2008)
“We see the opportunity to go well beyond building a simple web-based community with Dopplr,” says Monocle Editor-In-Chief and Dopplr Investor Tyler Brûlé. “There’s considerable scope to use Dopplr to improve the travel experience for all by engaging in discussions with not only our members but also travel brands and government agencies seeking informed opinions.”
About Dopplr
Dopplr is the online service for smarter travel. Dopplr helps you make the most of your trips by sharing your travel plans with the people and brands you trust. The service then highlights coincidences, for example, telling you that three people you know will be in Tokyo when you will be there too. You can use Dopplr on your personal computer or mobile phone. It links with many popular online calendars and social networks.
After a period of exclusive availability to selected global companies, Dopplr opened to world travellers everywhere in December 2007. With offices on London’s silicon roundabout and the Helsinki seaside, Dopplr was founded by CTO Matt Biddulph, Design Director Matt Jones, CEO Lisa Sounio and Dan Gillmor. Marko Ahtisaari is a founding investor.
Notes to editors
For more information or to schedule an interview please contact:
Lisa Sounio +358(0)405100691
press@dopplr.com
Matt Biddulph, Matt Jones and Lisa Sounio will be available for interviews in London on Tuesday 16th September.
For more information about Monocle please contact:
Emily Smith +44(0)2077254343
es@monocle.com
Investor URLs:
Esther Dyson – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esther_Dyson (on Dopplr: http://www.dopplr.com/traveller/esthr )
Tom Glocer – http://tomglocer.com/
Tyler Brûlé – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyler_Br%C3%BBl%C3%A9
Yat Siu – http://outblaze.com/main.php?id=about&page=about_exe#yat
Saul Klein – http://localglobe.blogspot.com/
Aditya dev Sood – http://www.cks.in/html/company_htmls/cks_people01.html
Lars Hinrichs – http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Hinrichs
Azeem Azhar – http://azeemazhar.wordpress.com/
Joshua Schachter – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Schachter
Brian Behlendorf – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Behlendorf
Joshua Ramo – http://www.joshuaramo.com/
How about financing for the ability to add simple things, like an open jaw, or adding stops within an existing itinerary without having to “fly home” on the site. Until basic features are added to Dopplr, it’s not really useful for the way a lot of people really travel.
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It would be great if you went global.. by introducing localized interface. My friends list is very limited because people are not comfortable with English.
Gr8 move.
Excellent, keeping growing — please!
…out of curiosity, how many registered (and active) users are now on dopplr?
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