SimpleGeo, a startup that gives developers the ability to add location-based features to their applications, has just announced a new round of funding and a slew of new hires.
Having set up shop last fall with a grand total of $1.67 million in seed money, SimpleGeo has now raised $8.14 million in a Series A round from Redpoint Ventures, First Round Capital, Lowercase Capital, the Foundry Group and angel Ravi Narasimhan.
As for new staff, Digg's recent personnel cuts following founder Kevin Rose's takeover of the CEO role have been this startup's gain. SimpleGeo has snapped up Jeffrey Kalmikoff, Ian Eure, Paul Lathrop and Nicole Williams, all formerly of Digg. The company also hired Rob Bailey of Yahoo/Lotus Vodka. The year-old company is now 18 employees -- and a reported 4,000 developer partners -- strong.
SimpleGeo's location services infrastructure, including a cloud-based storage engine and a geodata marketplace, was formally launched about six weeks ago. Altogether, SimpleGeo's products shave months off development time for location-based services. The marketplace itself is like an "iTunes for geodata," according to co-founder Matt Galligan. Here's a video demonstrating the kinds of data available:
According to the company blog, the new funds and staff will be instrumental in "changing and improving our product, positioning, marketing, etc. over the next few months." SimpleGeo plans to make "significant improvements" to its API and add some impressive new features.
[img credit: caveman]