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Townsquared raises $11M to expand social network for local businesses
Townsquared, an online community for small businesses, said today it has raised $11.05 million in a Series B funding round led by Intuit Inc. and Sierra Ventures, bringing the company’s total funding to $16.4 million.
The San Francisco-based startup also said Andy Bryson, former director of product management and growth at SurveyMonkey, has joined the Townsquared team as vice president of product.
Designed as a networking and communications tool for local businesses, Townsquared allows verified business owners to join its platform. The goal behind its network is to help business owners connect with their local ecosystem and form partnerships.
“We decided to invest in Townsquared because of the company’s unique capabilities to connect and help small businesses across the world,” said Tim Guleri, managing director at Sierra Ventures. “The multibillion-dollar small-business market has tremendous opportunity yet is lacking a common communication and resource platform.”
Townsquared is currently available in San Francisco, Oakland, New York and Seattle, and it will be available in Portland in September. The company said that a large portion of its new funding will will go toward expanding its platform into other major cities around the country, including Boston, Chicago, Austin, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Miami and others.
“The focus of Townsquared has always been on hyper-locality and achieving density within a market,” said Townsquared cofounder and Chief Executive Officer Rohit Prakash (above, center). “This is why we’ve strategically selected our launch markets and focused on expansion within them rather than launching quickly into new cities.” He said that in some neighborhoods, Townsquared has as much as 70 percent of local merchants participating, along with local government, police departments and business organizations.
The company said the funding will allow it to hire new talent, and it plans to expand its team by 60 percent within the next year. Other investors included Jocelyn Goldfein, a former engineering director at Facebook and former vice president of engineering at VMware, and angel investor Pravin Madhani.
Image from Townsquared
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