Mobile startup Wubud completes Angel round

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by Mike Butcher

on September 10, 2008

Wubud, a mobile social network currently in stealth mode, has completed an Angel round of investment from a sole angel – Paul Birch, co-founder of Bebo with brother Michael which this year sold to AOL for $850m. The amount of funding ~~was not disclosed but is understood to be in the low six figures~~ is £150,000, which suggests that this is “lift-off” money (enough to build a solid beta).

The startup is headed up by Paul Walsh, the still current CEO of Segala, a company which issues certification for Web and mobile services. Walsh is a prolific blogger and Twitterer and for an April Fool this year claimed, on his Twitter and Facebook accounts, that he’d sold Segala for a rumoured £25m, causing a flurry of speculation. As TCUK confirmed, he hadn’t.

However, this investment into Wubud appears real enough. Birch says Wubud “caught my eye” because it will be built around a mobile application. Details are scant on this but I understand it wil be a java application revealing location and presence, as hinted by our story in April.

http://www.codegent.com David Hart

Congrats to Paul Walsh…
http://www.edocr.com Manoj Ranaweera

well done Paul
http://www.brainbakery.com Jof Arnold

Nice one Paul et al. Looks to be an awesome app!
http://www.veedow.com Fabio

Ironic, the start up is in stealth mode and the amount undisclosed but Paul Walsh retweet Mike’s tweet and says “Thanks Mike ”
Sorry, thanks for what? For trying to disclose something that you apparently don’t want to disclose? For the *hype*? Thanks for what?
http://pix.ie Marcus Mac Innes

Congratulations Pauls! Best of luck with Wubud!
http://twitter.com/mikebutcher Mike Butcher

Fabio – What are you implying? If you want to make accusations then make them, don’t fuck around. If a startup is happy I’ve writenabout them, that’s their business. I couldn’t give a fuck either way about whether they are happy or not. A story is a story. Stories about people getting actual cash money for their startup is often more of a story than not.
http://www.veedow.com Fabio

Mike, first off mine wasn’t an accusation and most of all it wasn’t to you. I just find quite bizarre the way some people act sometimes.
If you want to keep everything stealth and secret to create expectation and hype around your company then do it, I have no problems about it. But this case sounds a bit clumsy to me.
Anyway, it’s not my business so I’ll just back off.
http://uk.sun.com/startups stewart townsend

Well done Paul, chat about other aspects soon…..
http://theblogconsultancy.typepad.com Drew Benvie

Congratulations Paul and crew. That’s really good news.
http://twitter.com/mikebutcher Mike Butcher

Fabio – Allow me to explain. “Stealth” means the startup’s actual application has not been revealed on the public stage. That fact that the startup is in existence is NOT a secret. I actually haven’t seen the Wubud app, although I assume I am going to get to see it, and then write about it… assuming it’s worth writing about! It’s a bit like Powerset, the so-called “Google killer” in Silicon Valley. That startup is still in “stealth mode”, but is already being written about because the press have found out about it and it’s even revealed a preview of what it might do when (or if) it officially launches:

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/powerset

I hope that helps.
http://www.veedow.com Fabio

Cool.
http://paulfwalsh.com/paul-birch-bebo-co-founder-invests-in-wubud/ Paul Birch, Bebo co-founder invests in Wubud – Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

[...] TechCrunch covered the story here. [...]
jim

“The amount of funding was not disclosed”

It says £150k on Paul’s blog
http://www.localdatacompany.com Scott Jones

@ Jim – that’s what I was going to say LOL.

Sounds interesting – there’s quite a few big players in this market doing the same thing as each other…someone doing something “different” is certainly called for, looking forward to having a gander at it.
http://www.ojointernet.com/noticias/la-red-social-movil-wubud-completa-una-mini-ronda/ La red social móvil Wubud completa una mini-ronda

[...] es una red social para usuarios de terminales móviles que acaba de recibir 150.000 libras en una primera ronda de business angel por parte de Paul Birch (co-fundador de [...]
http://m3.mydeo.com Cary Marsh

Nice one Paul. Nice one Paul.
http://www.patphelan.net pat phelan

well done to Paul and all the wubud gang
nice one Walshy
http://paulfwalsh.com/blog Paul Walsh

Thanks everyone, for your kind words. It’s nice to see people get behind the team – they have worked and continue to work, extremely hard. We’ve come a long way, but it’s a long road.

p.s. Mike – don’t forget to implement the email subscription for comments
http://www.championassistants.com Justin Gough

I just started hearing about Paul and reading his blog. Its been very inspiring to me as a business owner and entrepreneur.

Cheers,
Justin Gough
http://www.championassistants.com
http://www.hiadults.com Adult Social Networking

it is not clear on site but looks ok, they might get success. if they got it that much amount why they are not doing good enough advertise. see their traffic just picking up not much
http://venturebeat.com/2008/10/20/aka-aki-wubud-and-other-startups-will-demo-at-mobile-20/ Aka-aki, Wubud and other startups will demo at Mobile 2.0 » VentureBeat

[...] (United Kingdom) is mobile social network that’s still in stealth mode. It recently raised a small angel round from Paul Birch, co-founder of social networking site [...]
http://eu.techcrunch.com/2009/12/22/lessons-from-10-disappointing-tech-stories-of-2009/ Lessons from 10 disappointing tech stories of 2009

[...] 2008. Hell, it even had the making of a distribution model as early as April. It also had £150,000 seed funding. But although it was expected to appear as late as September this year, in 2009, with startups like [...]