(Credit:
Handipoints)
For parents, enticing kids to do their chores is often about making deals--a trade of sorts, like taking out the trash for extra time watching TV.
For George Zachary and his 10-year-old stepdaughter, that real-world exchange happens online through a site called Handipoints, a digital chore-list manager for parents and their kids. The Web site lets parents set a list of tasks for their children--like washing the dishes or filling the dog's bowl--and kids can rack up points for completing the list. With enough points, children can cash them in for digital gear in the site's virtual world, or for tangible goods with a few dollars from mom and dad.
"She earned points to get some Disney DVDs and books called The Warriors about an underground legion of cats," said Zachary, who as a venture capitalist knows about deal-making. "The site is her start page."
This arrangement could pay off doubly for Zachary. His venture firm Charles River Venture invested around $800,000 in Handipoints last spring with a group of angels that included former Googlers Georges Harik and Aydin Senkut, Inspiration Ventures, and Keith Rabois, an investor in YouTube.
Handipoints is one of a raft of new child-focused sites and virtual worlds that are competing with established kid favorites like Club Penguin, Gaia Online, and Webkinz. Like those sites, Handipoints runs its own virtual world with games and personalized avatars, but the company has a slightly different angle on fostering community. It's trying first to be a tool for parents and kids.
"We're trying to motivate kids to stay active in the real world," said Viva Chu, who founded the company in January 2007 after helping develop the architecture of Internet marketing company Adteractive.
The company makes money from the sale of goods from the site--books and DVDs, for example--and it plans to sell advertising that would be targeted toward parents. It also plans to charge subscriptions.
Since its launch last spring, the company has drawn about 150,000 registered users of both parents and kids. So it has a long way to go before it can compete with the big sites like Club Penguin, which draws millions of users every month. But Chu said the company, which employs 20 people in Oakland and overseas, expects to raise several million dollars this summer in a Series A round of funding to build out the service.
With luck, that won't be a chore in a tightening economy.
Chumby Industries, manufacturer of the eponymous huggable touch-screen Wi-Fi widget gadget, announced Monday that it has raised $12.5 million in Series B venture funding. The lead investor in the round was JK&B Capital, but existing investors Avalon Ventures, Masthead Venture Partners, and O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures also contributed.
A friendly-looking device that you configure online, the Chumby cycles through a rotation of custom widgets from weather to Google Calendar to cult-hit shopping site Woot.com. Many of these come from the Chumby Network, a platform of user- and partner-created applications that can be added to the little gadgets.
(Credit:
Rafe Needleman/CNET Networks)
It's also, aside from the touch screen, soft and squishy.
Formally, the new Chumby cash will be used to "accelerate growth of the company, and expand and broaden the Chumby Network to other screen-based Internet connected devices." Does that mean they'll make a Chumby kitten or a Chumby penguin?
"We are pleased to receive this financing, which will enable us to execute our vision and grow distribution of the Chumby Network," Stephen Tomlin, founder and CEO of Chumby Industries, said in a statement. "As the next step of our strategy, we will focus on establishing relationships to broaden distribution to other screen-based devices such as digital photo frames and LCD TVs."
Oh. So much for the touch-screen penguins.
Something about this just makes me uneasy.
Bragster, a London-based site "for dares and social bets," announced Wednesday that it has secured $3.5 million in Series A venture cash. The funding round was led by none other than Intel Capital, the investment branch of the famed chipmaker.
The premise of the Digg-meets-Jackass-esque site is that members dare one another (or place open dares) to perform ridiculous feats, then insist on video evidence that they were completed. Bragster, co-founded by a former Morgan Stanley employee and an Amazon.com alum, provides prizes to some of the most over-the-top stunts and also sponsors contests like the "Undies at Uni Challenge," which appears to encourage college students to take their clothes off.
So what are some of the top bets and challenges on Bragster? One member has dared another to "slap someone around the face with a fish in a supermarket." O.K., I'd like to see that, however inappropriate it may be. Same thing with "dress like a Spartan and run around in the street shouting lines from the movie 300." Others, like "pour 2 mugs of boiling hot coffee on my laptop," start to make me uneasy. Call me old-fashioned, but somebody could get hurt. At least Johnny Knoxville occasionally informed his viewers that they shouldn't imitate him at home.
Then there's "I bet I can do 15 shots of tequila in 60 minutes." Um, that's called "really dangerous." I hope Bragster has good lawyers.
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