Nettle, a 10-month-old San Diego startup with a new social/local/mobile application for the global entertainment market, says it has raised $500,000 in seed financing led by Google Ventures. Advancit Capital and 500 Startups also participated, along with some angel investors that include former eBay and Qualcomm executives.

Nettle co-founder and CEO Brian Dear isn’t saying much about the venture. In an e-mail to me this morning, he says “the real big news is next month.” When I asked if Nettle will be a consumer-facing service, he replies, “Yes, we are doing a moble/social/local app for a large global consumer vertical. We’ll also have a corresponding website.”

Dear, who previously founded San Diego-based Eventful in 2004, started Nettle last October with Dan O’Neill, who is the chief technology officer. Dear and O’Neill worked together more than a decade ago at San Diego’s MP3.com.

Dear also worked in various management roles at RealNetworks and eBay. O’Neill, who stayed with MP3.com through its acquisition by Vivendi Universal, also was a co-founder of Trusonic, which was sold to Mood Media in 2007.

Bruce V. Bigelow was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Follow @bvbigelow

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Email
• Reprints

Trending on Xconomy

• Lendbuzz, AI Auto Startup That Steps in When FICO Fails, Raises $150M
• Prenatal Testing Firm Cradle Genomics Debuts With $17M, Illumina Ties
• Neon’s Early Vaccine Study Is a Peek at Immunotherapy’s Third Wave