Following up on my recent post about Smarter Agent, I did some research and found out that their funding event apparently took place in early June. There wasn't much about it out on the Web, and it did not appear in the quarterly Price Waterhouse/Moneytree report. I did find this post, apparently made by Smarter Agent management, on the blog Ubikwitus :

Funding
$2 million primarily from founders, private investors and the commonwealth of Pennsylvania venture capital fund.

I assume the venture fund is Ben Franklin Partners, which does list Smarter Agent in its portfolio, though again there didn't seem to be much publicity about it.

In my research, I also came across this post by Jonathan Spinney on the blog maperture:

Smarter Agent needs a smarter agent

Smarter Agent will reportedly (subscription required) close their first VC finance round next week, with plans to double staff thereafter and make a run for it. I’ve encountered widely varying opinions on this type of app. Back in 2004, a then Director of LBS at Sprint said marketing cash support for a real-estate app was unlikely based on direct industry experiences she had, citing MLS listings as fragmented, inaccurate databases with little-to-no-value. Strong words for sure, but conversational nonetheless since Sprint eventually deployed the app—minus the expensive marketing effort to support its discovery.

Given the current infighting for real-estate mapping among the big portals and GIS vendors, and given Microsoft’s 80% market share in this space via Virtual Earth, I wonder if it makes sense for Smarter Agent to find, well, a smarter agent D2C channel.

Just one man's opinion.

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