Friday, October 23, 2009
Investors Bet on Another Real-Time Start-Up. Next Up for Hot Potato: Product, Users.
Here’s a good way to get your hands on scarce venture capital money: Create a start-up geared around Twitter-like “real-time” sharing and conversations. The newest entrant: Hot Potato, a buzzy start-up that’s supposed to let users converse about a particular event, whether they’re attending it in person or watching from afar. When it’s up and running, that is. The five-man crew doesn’t have users or a product just yet. But it has just raised around $1 million.
What’s the value of a service that takes a long Web address and makes it shorter–but doesn’t have a business model? Several million dollars, according to investors who have just sunk $2 million into bit.ly, a start-up incubated by the Betaworks gang.
Web start-ups that plan to make money from advertising are having a rough time raising money. But Web start-ups that say they’ll do it by charging customers something? Still possible.
