Tapastreet pulls in €500,000 funding round

The two firms contributed equally, each supplying Tapastreet with €250,000.

Kernel Capital backed the company via the Bank of Ireland's Seed and Early Stage Equity Fund, a €32m vehicle focused on making early-stage investments in start-ups operating in the technology, greentech, food and financial services sectors. Enterprise Ireland is a backer of the fund.

Tapastreet directly approached Kernel and Enterprise Ireland to strike a deal, according to company COO David Johnson. The company chose to approach the two firms due to Kernel's reputation in Ireland for being an active partner to its backed start-ups and Enterprise Ireland's involvement in Tapastreet prior to its investment. According to Johnson, Enterprise Ireland was a "key component" to the company's international launch.

Tapastreet plans on using the fresh capital to grow its engineering, marketing and support teams, as well as open up new language markets.

The company employs the "lean start-up" methodology, namely focusing its priorities on developing its "minimum viable product" and rolling it out onto the market. As such, Tapastreet is not yet generating revenue, due to its app being free for Android and iOS. Johnson states that the app will continue to be free to download so that the company can build a "substantial, engaged user base" before it begins to focus on generating turnover. "We are fortunate that our investors understand this market, and want us to focus now on building the best user experience possible," says Johnson.

Company
Headquartered in Dublin, Tapastreet was founded in 2012 and currently employs eight staff. The company has developed a mobile platform that allows users to discover real-time social media video and photo interactions based on location. The platform accesses popular social media sites or apps and compiles visual media findings for specific locations, allowing a user to view and share a wide selection of interactions for a specific location across several social media platforms.

The app has only been available for a couple of weeks, as the company unveiled the Android and iOS versions at the TechCrunch Disrupt 2013 conference in San Francisco earlier this month.

People
Former Intel engineer Joe Mitchell and former Google employee Dave Johnson are the founders of Tapastreet. Mitchell is the company's CEO, while Johnson fills the role of COO. Ger Goold is a partner at Kernel, while John O'Dea is the high-potential start-ups manager at Enterprise Ireland. Additions to Tapastreet's board of directors had not yet been decided by the firms at the time of writing.

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