UK start-up Imagini has secured a significant $13.5 million in a second round of funding. The additional investment comes from Horizons Ventures, NorthZone Ventures and Atomico. The first round of $5m and came from NorthZone, Atomico, TAG, Brent Hoberman (co-founder of LastMinute.com) and Bill Draper.
Imagini has an interesting technology called VisualDNA which effectively works out people’s personality types by presenting them with picture choices – instead of asking users to log in and type in their profile. The Flash-based quiz is not unlike a game, and can be quite addictive once you get going. The result is that Imagini says online retailers get a 37% uplift from customers after they get profiled. So whether you picked the Grand Torino over the Lamborghini really does say something about you.
You can see the test for yourself via the quiz in Imagini’s consumer-facing site called Youniverse, a sort of personality test-driven social network which we reviewed last year, which has a million uniques a month.
The quiz also makes it easy to distribute through online ad and affiliate networks, and a plug-In that will allow any website publisher to create their own free online quiz. So far clients include MSN, Hotels.com, Pepsi, Lastminute.com, Nectar, Vodafone and the British Army. Some 15 million people have taken the quiz since the company was founded in 2006 and the something like 70% of contributors to the Visual DNA ‘community’ are from the US.
Imaginia was founded by CEO Alex Willcock. Today it also appoints Dermot Halpin, former president of Expedia Europe, as non-executive Chairman and Board Director.
New technology with very heavy backers and funding, this company should go far.
TechFilipino
An easy to understand explanation is needed on their sites front page.
The technical solution seems fine, with great ease of use. However, I still wonder how exactly online retailers should benefit from the insights gained?
Seems like malarkey built for businesses, not people really. Good luck to them though; gotta be doing something useful to get that kind of backing these days.
Ok, either this article misses the point of what this software does, or those VCs are insane. Let’s assume that 3 VC firms can’t *all* be full of insane people. So how is this worth that much money? I’d really like to know. There have to be some other applications than taking a silly quiz to find an avatar… I mean seriously.
Looks like what Pairwise was doing for HR tests. It didn’t go far. I’ll be interested to see what opportunity they missed. http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/30/are-you-a-y-combinator-founder/
their demos make me feel really really stupid for surfign there and checking it out.
the fact that you are not getting it and 3 vc firms do means you’re missing something here
tell oh wise one, what did we all miss and 3 vc’s got?
They seem to be doing something right… their cutesy little personality quiz described me pretty much bang on. I guess I’m worth 13.5M, so why not Imagini?
(One bad: the click to see “more” on a couple pages isn’t working.)
I think it makes things easier to describe your product in simple terms insteading of roaming around in the bush. Why not describe Imagini as a visual personality profiling service?
this site is made by someone i know, who is also a psychologist.
http://e.idsolution.co.kr
i think it’s way better, as far as visual profiling concerns.
They’re lucky to receive this much funding for a concept that sounds straight out of the dot bust era. Maybe the FSA conducted the risk assessment? Good luck turning a profit guys.
i think it’s way better, as far as visual profiling concerns.