Loopt
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| Private, venture-backed | |
| Industry | Geosocial networking, location-based services |
| Founded | 2005 |
| Headquarters | Mountain View, California |
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Key people
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Sam Altman, CEO |
| Website | www |
Loopt was a company based in Mountain View, California, United States which provided a service for smartphone users to share their location selectively with other people (see location-based service). The service supported iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and Windows Phones. Loopt's services had more than five million registered users and partnerships with every major U.S. mobile phone carrier. Their applications offered a variety of privacy controls. In addition to its core features, users also had the ability to integrate Loopt with other social networks, including Facebook and Twitter.
The company was founded in 2005 and received initial funding from Y Combinator, and completed Series A and B financing led by Sequoia Capital and New Enterprise Associates. Over the life of the company, Loopt raised over $39 million in funding over 5 rounds. The company's board members included TiVo-founder Mike Ramsay and Greg McAdoo of Sequoia Capital. In March 2012 Loopt agreed to be acquired by Green Dot Corporation for $43.4 million in cash, with $9.8 million of that to be set aside for employee retention.
Loopt began with seed funding from Y Combinator, a venture firm specializing in early stage startups. That summer, Stanford sophomores Sam Altman and Nick Sivo worked to build the first prototype of Loopt. They were later joined by Alok Deshpande as well as two of Sam’s childhood friends, Rick & Tom Pernikoff.
Loopt received US$5 million in Series A funding from Sequoia Capital and New Enterprise Associates and struck a deal to launch the service on Boost Mobile devices in September 2006. Boost Mobile featured Loopt in a series of commercials that are most known for the “Where you at?” tag line.
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Wikipedia