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.