Skout, Inc.

Conference: DEMO 09
Market Segment: Consumer Software and Services
Funding Amount: $500,001-$1,000,000
Funding Round: Angel
Funding Details: Seed funding: $1 million over two rounds by same angle investor over 24-month period.
Competitors: No direct competitors. Secondary competitors include SpeedDate, Loopt, Zoosk, Flirtomatic, Match.com and eHarmony.
Product Description: Skout Out is a dating tool that helps singles find and flirt with others in their immediate vicinity. Leveraging LBS and 42" touch-screen plasma displays, people looking for love only need their fingers to flirt, send virtual gifts and even music to the people that dazzle them. Skout Out currently interacts with hundreds of thousands of Skout users via their iPhones, cell phones and laptops to find love on Skout's mobile dating service.
Market Opportunity: Juniper Research predicts, in an October 2008 report, that mobile dating will expand to a $1.4 billion market within four years.
DEMO Says: First, there were the online match-making services. Then, came mobile social networks. Now, the two come together in the next generation of technology-assisted dating. At the heart of Skout Out, a large-format touch screen display that serves as a virtual-meets-real-world message board in clubs and bars, is a robust platform for location-aware social applications. Dating is a great first market; we expect Skout to aggressively explore this and other application areas in the months to come.

DEMO: The Launchpad for Emerging Technology