Aiming at building a reputation among both technology and investment types as it expands a subscription service for filtered investment news, Silicon Valley startup SkyGrid Inc. is adding former American Express Co. CEO James Robinson and his RRE Ventures fund as lead investor in an $11 million Series B round set to be announced Wednesday.
RRE is joined by the $1.4 trillion money management firm BlackRock Inc., which also is a customer of its service. Seed investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson and technolgy pundit Esther Dyson, and additional strategic investors joined the company's list of backers in a $1.25 million Series A round in April 2007. The deal brings total outside investment in SkyGrid to $12.8 million, in addition to an undisclosed amount founder and CEO Kevin Pomplun put into the company to develop technology in its first year (see our video interview with Pomplun below).
Pomplun founded SkyGrid in March 2005 fresh out of college based on a need for greater filtering of news on publicly traded companies he identified through managing his own investments. He self-funded the company and recruited a full technology development team with an undisclosed amount. In the first quarter of 2006, the company raised $550,000 in a seed round from Dyson and Draper Fisher, based on an early product design and marketing plan. The second round funded extensive experimentation with a roster of five money management beta partners before the company launched commercially in February.
I think it is a great idea, next stop should be to capture the European market for skygrid