InSITE Fellow Brian Rothenberg’s start-up, SkillSlate, just announced a $1.1M seed round of funding, co-led by Canaan Partners (an InSITE VC sponsor) and First Round Capital, along with participation from a number of prominent NY-based angel investors, including Jason Finger (Founder & Former CEO of SeamlessWeb), John Caplan (Founder & CEO of The OpenSky Project), John Goldsmith (Board Member of Gerson Lehrman Group), and more.
SkillSlate helps consumers find individual service providers, such as tutors, dog walkers, and personal trainers, by enabling users to search thousands of business profile pages complete with pictures, prices and reviews. These one-person businesses often provide great service at highly competitive prices, but, until SkillSlate, have been hard to find online. Many individual service providers lack a web presence – and are thus underrepresented in search engines, where 82% of people look for local services. SkillSlate’s technology ensures service providers’ pages surface highly in search engine queries, driving greater web visibility for their services and helping more potential customers find them.
According to Phineas Barnes, Principal at First Round Capital, “SkillSlate will provide value to both buyers and sellers of local services by reducing friction in the discovery and quality assessment process. Their unique approach solves a real problem for both sides of this large and inefficient market.”
InSITE’s commitment to entrepreneurship comes in many forms, and this is just one example of InSITE fellows making an impact on the New York tech scene. Congrats to Brian and the SkillSlate team!