SendMe gets $15M in new funding

By Mickey Alam Khan

March 19, 2008

SendMeMobile receives

Mobile media company SendMe Mobile has gained $15 million in new funding from existing and new investors to pursue a multi-brand strategy in the off-deck marketplace.

The news comes soon after mobile entertainment content provider Thumbplay Inc. said it had raised $18 million in funds from venture capitalists. New investor GrandBanks Capital led SendMe’s Series round, which included existing investors True Ventures and Spark Capital.

“We’ve been in the process of becoming the Viacom of the Web-to-mobile space,” said Russ Klein, cofounder and CEO of SendMe, San Francisco. “We’re strong believers in taking a multi-brand approach to this market.

“What we’re building is a portfolio of interconnected Web-to-mobile brands, where each brand can not only stand on its own with its own business model but also contribute content, users and service functionality to the rest of the network,” he said.

SendMe’s network includes mobile sweepstakes brand SoLow.com, off-portal mobile social network mBuzzy.com and content site SendMeMobile.com.

The real sweepstakes winner

The cash infusion will help SendMe add new premium and community-generated content, services and applications to each brand. The company will also launch new brands and look to acquire properties from the marketplace.

SendMe has signed major content deals in the past year with companies such as Corbis, EMI Music, Glu, Telcogames, IODA, Sony Pictures Television, The Orchard and Gameloft. Partnership deals were also struck with AEG Live, MobiTV, Interscope Records and Universal Music Group.

The company bought SoLow.com and mBuzzy.com last year as well.

“Our strategy is to develop and grow a portfolio of interconnected brands, where we can have best of both worlds: get significant economies of scale on the technical side while also generating significant economies of scope by cross-marketing to different sets of users and by partnering with different companies,” Mr. Klein said.

“In essence, we believe we can solve more problems for leading media companies and for our on- and offline and mobile partners by offering more ways to monetize their content, monetize their users and their traffic,” he said.