We closed $1M financing and launched version 2 of Sampa!
By Marcelo Calbucci
The big news is actually two news items and is pretty big for all people involved with Sampa. First, we closed a $1M financing round with several local and Bay-area angel investors. Second, and most importantly, we released the version 2 of our product that will make a dramatic change to our engagement, stickness and viral rates.
On the financing side, we got great names investing on us, including a lot of great people that didn't want to come public about it for personal reasons, but some angels are ok to be named, including: Geoff Entress (Madrona Venture Group), Alex Algard (WhitePages.com), Jon Lazarus, Rick Schell (VC at OnSet),John Hansen (ex-Lightsurf) and Mike Koss (StartPad). To all our investors, I'm very thankful for your belief in what we are doing and we know this is just the beginning. I want you to know I'll do my best to make this work!
Funding is great, but doesn't get you anywhere if you don't put it to good use. And that leads us to our new product launch. That is the big news of the day.
We chopped the head off!
In the end of November we decided that there was nothing that we should re-use from the existing interface into the new interface (almost nothing). So we freed ourselves (and our minds) of have to be constrained by what exists already. Sampa, technically is a combination of multiple systems and components that create the service, but for our users it's the UI!
We re-created about 20% of the service (the part that users see) and made it amazingly trivial for anyone to create a web site. The flip side is that we had to remove some features to make it simpler, and we won't put them back in unless we can figure out a way to make it fit and be easy to use. We got bloated, and now we are slim, slick and cool.
Kudos on a very well executed product and business with Sampa. I just created my personal page with Sampa and found the whole process remarkably simple. Couple of questions for ya..
1. Does Sampa allow website authors to generate revenue (through Google ads, banners, etc.)? If so, does Sampa gain revenue from this?
2. Sampa does a great job on allowing users to have an online presence to share content from? Any thoughts on supporting users that may want to create a retail presence, i.e. selling products from their sites via a shopping cart interface?
Kudos again on Sampa.. There's tons of people out there that have things to share but don't have the HTML / web authoring skills to do so.
Naveen
By Naveen Jayasundaram - 4/2/2008 8:55 AM
CONGRATS, Marcelo!
Great news about the funding round. Whatever your new investors paid...I know they got a great deal because I'm confident Sampa's going to be a big success!
Nice job closing the round and looking forward to the future of Sampa, Oliver
Congratulations Marcelo - you have come a long way. Now the famous seattle entrepreneur has even more money ;) All the best and our best wishes are with you at this time.
Regards -- Krishnan
By Krishnan Iyer - 4/3/2008 11:38 AM
The mark of a good entrepreneur is determination and passion. Marcelo, you have both traits in spades and that will serve you well.
Congrats on the hard work, now the game really begins!
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. First, we closed a $1M financing round with several local and Bay-area angel investors. Second, and most importantly, 
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October, 2007