Group Texting Service GroupMe Raises $10.6 Million in Funding

It seems as if the idea of mass texting strikes a chord with more than just teenagers — group texting startup  GroupMe has just scored $10.6 million in Series B funding in a round led by Khosla Ventures (with participation from additional new investors, including General Catalyst Partners and First Round Capital, and previous investors Lerer Ventures, Betaworks and SV Angel).

GroupMe, which was born back in May during TechCruch’s Disrupt conference, is a super simple SMS-based and device-independent servicetool that essentially lets users create chatrooms on their phones, thereby mitigating the confusion that comes from conversing with a group of friends via text.

The simple idea, however, apparently is palatable to investors. “Khosla Ventures looks for passionate, talented entrepreneurs who think big and we found that with Jared and Steve,” says David Weiden, general partner of Khosla Ventures (who is also joining the board of directors), of co-founders Jared Hecht and Steve Martocci (formerly of Gilt Group and Tumblr). “We are excited to work together.”

The company previously raised $850,000 from investors including Betaworks, First Round Capital, SV Angel and Lerer Ventures — money that was essential to the startup’s well-being, considering GroupMe is powered by Twilio’s voice and SMS platform, which charges per group phone number, per text and per minute for each call.

This new, far heftier chunk of change will be used to expand the startup’s team and to build new product offerings, according to GroupMe.

“We have been on a fast train, building and growing GroupMe with tons of support from the tech community, which is so crucial to taking the service more mainstream,” says Hecht. “As we continue to build, GroupMe users can expect more features just like what they have experienced so far: really intuitive, useful and fun features that everyone can use.”

The idea of group-texting is not unique to GroupMe — among other services, Brightkite and Fast Societyhave taken that plunge. However, GroupMe seems to have attracted the most attention as far as investors are concerned.

When it comes to monetization, however, a platform is not yet in place per se (the service is free). The startup plans to monetize via sponsored groups and advertising, which it is currently testing.

This seems to be a popular theme with startups of this nature — Fast Society recently announced apartnership with MTV to hype the January 17 premiere of Skins. Partnerships of this nature — which we assume GroupMe will be pursuing given the branded initiative it launched at Austin City Limits — seem to make the most sense when it comes to reaching a target audience in a non-obtrusive way.