London Event App YPlan Raises $12m to go Global

London’s spontaneous events app YPlan has announced that it will open its doors in New York after receiving $12m (£7.8m) in Series A funding. US VC firm General Catalyst Partners, investors in Kayak and Airbnb, led the round, along with YPlan’s initial backers Wellington Partners. 

The company has attracted an impressive range of co-investors, including Ashton Kutcher’s A-Grade, early Facebook employee Kevin Colleran and David Morin, founder of Path and serial angel investor. Shakil Khan, investor and advisor to Spotify and Summly, also joined the round. 

The start-up, which curates 15 last-minute listings per night, has offered tickets to more than 2,500 exclusive events, including a Beyoncé show and the invite-only Sofar Sounds, since it launched in November last year. It passed 200,000 downloads in April and is present on more than 10 per cent of London’s iPhones.  

We spoke to YPlan last year about how they find all the weird and wonderful stuff that London has to offer. Its executive team boasts some of the brains behind toptable, GetTaxi, Songkick, Airbnb and lastminute.com, with the former digital director of Timeout in charge of picking the best events. 

The YPlan team has already opened its New York office and is currently hiring for a growth hacker, a product manager and marketing staff to support the official launch in H2 2013. More European cities and an Android app are also on the way. 

The company received its seed funding of $1.7m in July 2012, a round led by pan-European Wellington Partners, investors in Hailo, and UK-focused Octopus Investments, which invested in SwiftKey. We'll be speaking to YPlan to find out more about how they're going to spend the next $12m.


Written for Mobile Marketing Magazine and published here: http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/londons-mobile-only-event-app-yplan-raises-12m-go-global#pa0aGpFLhHTJARrW.99