Tile Item Finder Gets Funding from Bessemer After Successful Self Crowdfunding

The Tile item finder, which put a new spin on finding lost items, raised over $2.6 Million doing a Self-Starter crowdfunding campaign becoming the most successful Self-Starter campaign ever.  The company was founded by Nick Evans and Mike Farley in 2012.  Evans had previously worked for Lockitron and Pebble bringing strong crowdfunding experience to the Tile Project.

Now – after a successful Power Pitch on CNBC – Bessemer Venture Partners has invested in a seed round for the startup company.  Nick Evans did the pitch and received three “ins” from the panel.  The Power Pitch delivered earlier this month included Bessemer Partner Byron Deeter based in Menlo Park, California.  Tile which markets itself as the “worlds largest lost and found” caught the attention of Bessemer because of the simplicity and elegant approach of Tile which is at the forefront of a new market.  Following their self crowdfunding round of financing, Tile continues to sell $150,000 in product every day.  The first round of the item finders are scheduled to ship this coming winter.

Bessemer Venture Partners prides itself in making investments in areas which currently generate a zero dollar market.  Some examples of their successful approach include Smule the music sharing app which now has 125 Million users who have shared 1 Billion songs – and Uber the on demand car service which has seen utilization skyrocket – along with their valuation.  Bessemer has a fund of over $1.6 Billion which has included A round financing for Pinterest, Yelp and Skype.

The Tile device continues to pretail on their web site offering individual Tiles for only $18.95.  Each device has a life expectancy of one year – after which you must return the device and pay for a new one.  The service leverages Blue Tooth Low Energy (BLE) for their location service and leverages the crowd by allowing any installed Tile App to relay the location of your device.  Currently the product is only available for iOS products as the team is waiting on the Android environment to offer  BLE.  Once available a version for Android will be released.