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Social Networking - Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Hot Potato Raises $1.42 For Event Social Networking

Brooklyn-based Hot Potato, a social networking startup focused on connecting friends and fans through live events, has raised $1.42M in first-round funding.

Hot Potato is building tools for real-time social collaboration amongst groups who share an interest in any event or experience as it’s happening. Hot Potato users can filter by location, social graph or “presence” at an event. AllThingsD says that it won’t really kick into gear until Apple signs off on its iPhone app, and that’s taking a bit longer than the company expected.

It sounds like a fairly straight-forward business. Hot Potato can kick-start roll-out by doing deals with an event promoter - say a baseball team or a music event - people start using it and then it snowballs from there. Sponsorships ensue. The clear challenge then is that the functionality is not terribly hard to replicate by others.

First Round Capital and RRE Ventures co-led. Other investors were Ron Conway; realtime start-up incubator Betaworks; Huffington Post co-founder Ken Lerer and his son Ben Lerer, who runs Thrillist; New York Observer owner Jared Kushner and his brother Josh; ZelnickMedia’s Strauss Zelnick; Hunch co-founder Chris Dixon; About.com co-founder Scott Kurnit; Facebook exec Dave Morin; Boxee’s Zach Klein; online ads' Allen Morgan; and Cyan creators Scott & Cyan Banister.

Hot Potato is led by Justin Shaffer has been with MLB online since 2001, most recently as SVP, New Media at MLB Advanced Media.