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Wireless - Tuesday, February 16, 2010

VCs “Push” $1.1M On Urban Airship

Social media and the company’s that support it are still in favor with VCs. Mobile content delivery channel provider Urban Airship announced a $1.1 million Series A round led by True Ventures. Seattle-based Founders Co-op also participated in the fledgling company’s round.

So what does Urban Airship do? If you have ever played the mega iPhone app Tap Tap Revenge and received a message on your phone saying your best friend just crushed your score, you can thank Urban Airship for the notification. Tap Tap creator Tapulous was the company’s first customer back in June 2009 and since then they have acquired 1,500 customers and have sent out over 110 million messages. Urban Airship now boasts some solid A-list customers including Universal Music Group and Virgin Atlantic.

What we like best about Urban Airship is that they are a scrappy four-person company. How scrappy? For a while they had their engineers getting paid through the Self Employment Assistance Program sponsored by the state of Oregon. But as of January, they didn't need the taxpayers of Oregon to pay their employees as Urban Airship is now cash flow positive. Profitability was a priority for CEO Scott Kveton as he said the company was focused on revenues from day 1.

As for the $1.1 million, Mr. Kveton says he will be using the cash to add a sales team and grow the engineering side of the house as Urban Airship is looking to expand its message notification service to the Blackberry, Android and Nokia (NOK:NYSE) phones. It would be a smart move for Mr. Kyeton to hire a few accountants as hyper competitive gamers dig these notifications and eventually one of the big players in the gaming industry like Electronic Arts (ERTS:NASDAQ) or Gameloft will acquire Urban Airship at a large premium.

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