Moped, a Berlin startup that is ‘rethinking messages from the ground up’, has raised $1 million in seed funding from Germany’s Earlybird Ventures and high-profile U.S. investors like Lerer Ventures, SV Angel and Betaworks.
Still early in its development, Moped is building a private digital messaging service on the Web, desktop and smartphones – the company is launching its iPhone app today – that aims to eventually enable anyone to start conversations from anywhere, at any time, as long as they’re connected to the Internet.
Currently, users are required to log in via Twitter – TNW readers can sign up here.
The app supports familiar features like @-replies, search and hashtags and comes with a useful Chrome extension for speedy Web-based messaging.
Interestingly, Moped also integrates with third-party services like Dropbox for file-sharing, with more integrations and authentication possibilities down the line.
Earlybird’s Ciarán O’Leary explains why the firm led Moped’s financing round:
“One idea, for example, is to make email better by building something on top of it. The other idea, what Moped is doing, is to start from scratch.”
Needless to say, that means Moped is still a little rough around the edges at this stage, and it probably will be for a while, but it’ll be interesting to see what else the startup comes up with in the future.
Give it a whirl and let us know what you think.
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