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That’s a lot of money for the still-young startup, and we’re hearing from one source that this most recent round was raised at a valuation of just over $100 million. Impressive.
SCVNGR is a location-based service, but it differs from apps like Foursquare and Facebook Places because it puts a much bigger emphasis on gaming (yes, Foursquare has points and badges, but
its gaming mechanics really aren’t very fleshed out). SCVNGR revolves around challenges — check into a local burrito joint, and you might get prompted to answer a trivia question, or take a
photo wearing the burrito tinfoil on your head. Businesses can customize their challenges to be as ridiculous, or straightforward, as they’d like.
SCVNGR caters to local businesses and chains alike, and it’s had brands like American Eagle and Coca Cola running campaigns using the service.
CEO Seth Priebatsch says that the company will be using the money to drive SCVNGR’s growth abroad (he says that this was one reason why the company went with Balderton, which is based in
Europe). He says that some of the money will also be used to further research game mechanics to see what translates well in the physical world.
Jason Kincaid is a writer, tech pundit, on-screen video guy, and occasional conference host with ambitions of getting into comedy.
Before becoming a cliché, Jason worked as a writer at TechCrunch from 2008-12, spanning some of the site’s most formative years. There, he wrote over 3,000 posts, met with countless
entrepreneurs, and interviewed key figures including FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, Senator Al Franken, Google VP (and now Yahoo CEO) Marissa Mayer, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Dropbox
CEO Drew Houston, and many others. He was the cohost of the weekly-ish talk show OMG/JK and the co-creator and host of TC Cribs.
Drawing on his experience at TechCrunch, in late 2014 he published his first book: The Burned-Out Blogger’s Guide to PR.
He has appeared on CNBC, BBC America, NPR, and G4, moderated several panels at SXSW, regularly serves as the emcee of the Startup Battlefield portion of TechCrunch’s Disrupt conference, and
recently played himself on the hit HBO show, Silicon Valley.
He attended UCLA, graduating with a BS in Biology and a minor in Society and Genetics.
