500friends Completes $4.5M Series A Financing

500friends, Inc., a San Francisco, CA-based provider of social loyalty solutions for e-commerce retailers, has completed a $4.5m Series A financing.

The round was led by Crosslink Capital, with participation from Intel Capital and members of the company’s executive team.

500friends intends to use the capital to solidify functionalities, and expand its sales and marketing efforts.

In conjunction with the funding, Eric Chin, General Partner with Crosslink Capital, has joined the company’s Board of Directors.

Founded in 2010 by CEO Justin Yoshimura, 500friends provides a white-label social loyalty platform, called LoyaltyPlus ™, which provides retailers with the tools and analytics to recognize and reward the customer behaviors that matter most to their brand, including writing reviews, referring friends, sharing products on Facebook or Twitter, and frequent purchasing.
Launched in July 2011, the platform has been adopted by digital retailers such as Hotels.com, US AutoParts, and Shoebuy.com, e-commerce sites such as L’Oreal and Armani, e-commerce brands like Scentiments.com and PetfoodDirect.com.

The company has also been funded by Y-Combinator, and individual investors such as Jeff Fluhr, Steve Newcomb, Naval Ravikant, and Chris Yeh.

FinSMEs

15/03/2012

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