[France] Location-based search and discovery service Tellmewhere has raised a further €550,000 of funding. This brings the total raised by the Paris startup to €1.4m. The new round was led by Stephane Romanyszyn, founder and CEO of entreparticuliers.com, the leading French real estate website.
The new funding will be used to support Tellmewhere’s international expansion, with version 2.0 of the service reaching the UK and USA “in the coming weeks”.
Tellmewhere offers a mix of local reviews, mobile social networking and location-based discovery. Users can search for places (and businesses) nearby, rate, write and read reviews, and send alerts to friends in their social network letting them know that they are nearby. It competes with the likes of Qype and the various localised versions of Yelp, along with Gowalla and Foursquare but without the gaming element.
The service currently targets the iPhone with a dedicated app, as well as a browser-based generic mobile version. Registered users of the iPhone app total 450k (mostly from France). An Android app is planned for early next year.
Tellmewhere says that it has an advantage over some of its competitors as it avoids “the chicken-and-egg problem” where users are required to populate places. Instead the service already features “a comprehensive” database of places and works anywhere in the world, the company claims.
In terms of business model, Tellmewhere is hoping to create a “pay-for-performance platform” by sending real-world customers to local businesses, not through virtual clicks a la Google. The company says that it’s already started signing up merchants via its self-service feature, which opened its doors in October. Tellmewhere says that 500 businesses have already registered to offer local coupons.