SendMe Raises Cash on Premium SMS Services

US Premium SMS service specialists SendMe Mobile raised another $12m (bringing the total to $35m) in order to fund their further expansion into the - what they call nascent - Premium SMS space. New boys Triangle Peak Ventures joined return investors True Ventures, Amicus Capital, Spark Capital and Grand Banks Ventures for the round (note to self: VCs need to get more creative in finding names for their firms). SendMe wants to use the cash for 3 purposes, namely a) working capital, b) acquisitions and c) "unforeseen challenges" of the economy. Unforeseen, huh?

Be it as it may be but there are a couple of points remarkable on this (though not that remarkable if you know Russ Klein, their CEO, who is a really bright cookie!):

• Premium SMS is considered nascent in the US (when it really is a fairly old hat in old Europe). Is simplicity saving the day? Should European firms maybe looking to repositioning this beautifully simple monetization tool rather than turning to more complex matters such as micro-billing, etc?
• Raising that amount of money in this day and age is respectable in itself. It does keep you wondering though where they are running with their cap table: on $35m total, their valuation must be somewhere in the region of $50-100m. That is big considering that the likes of Glu trade at 0.2x revenues or so.
• The aforementioned report mentions that reverse auctions ("SoLo") had a "break-out year" for SendMe in 2008. This would arguably fly even higher in a full-blown recession ("darling, I just got ourselves an iPod for $1.34"), so might well have been the angle that made for convincing forecasts.

Big shout to Russ & team: you guys rock!

SendMe off portal: adding buzz (or rather mbuzzy)

The fine folks from SF-based SendMe Mobile have acquired mbuzzy, the latter allegedly being the "first US off-portal community" (it always is in the definition of the terms, I guess). Whatever the marketing spin might be, it is impressive how the small start-up seems to assert itself into the US mobile content market. They had recently announced a deal to distribute Glu Mobile's games and have also closed deals with Sony Pictures and UK game aggregator Telcogames.

mbuzzy has more than half a million mobile users who have downloaded over 15 million pieces of videos, wallpapers and ringtones (they don't call it personalization, which would be uncool as others stop that offering altogether but social media instead) to their mobile phones. It allows sharing of content and consumption both on your mobile and the PC. Pretty much up to scratch then. They will add the viral element to SendMe's content offering, which is effectively a mix of generally available hit games, imagery and music and simple text-based trivia games. They also run SoLow.com, a reverse auction site.

It is good to see that there does seem to be a market outside the carrier decks in the US after all. After the recent announcements (here and here) from Jamba/Jamster and Zingy/Vindigo, one could have started to doubt: Jamba is rumoured to re-focus on Europe (perhaps surprising after their Simpsons coup) whilst Zingy announced a name change and the closing of its personalization business. However, it seems to be the content mix that makes it. If the viral mbuzzy guys leverage that further, even better. Rock on, SendMe!