Redbeacon, which won the TechCrunch50 launch conference in 2009, has raised a $7.4 million round of financing. The round was led by Mayfield Fund and Venrock.
Raj Kapoor, Managing Director at Mayfield, and Brian Ascher, General Partner at Venrock, will join the company’s board of directors.
This is Redbeacon’s first outside round of financing. The company has funded development and operations to date with just $200,000 – $150,000 from the founders and $50,000 for winning TechCrunch50.
The company lets users search, browse and book local service providers – from plumbers to lawyers – on its website. Service providers pay a fee to Redbeacon for new paying customers, or in some categories, like lawyers, for a lead.
Soon the company will launch a widget that allows third party websites to embed core Redbeacon features into their sites, and Redbeacon will pay a share of revenue generated from those customers. See redbeacon.com/p/affiliate for more information.
They are live in the Bay Area and will soon expand to new markets, says CEO Ethan Anderson.
I sat down with Anderson and incoming board member and investor Kapoor in our studio in San Francisco to talk about the company’s progress and the new funding round. Anderson wanted to wait to raise any outside money until they’d fine tuned the model in at least one market and could show good conversion from website visitors to bookings. The video is below.