Massage chair company Zubio gets funding to help stressed techies relax

The weekend’s here at last, and thank goodness — I’m totally beat and stressed from a week of blogging and running around at Web 2.0. If you’re feeling the same way, now might be a good time to enjoy a massage at Zubio in downtown San Francisco. Not only was the company co-founded by David Palmer, inventor of the massage chair, it also just raised a second round of funding, according to VentureWire.

Dubbed  as the potential “Starbucks of chair massage” (because Palmer is working hard to make massage mainstream) by the Atlantic Monthly and others, the company raised an undisclosed first round and opened the studio in 2006. Zubio’s financial district location puts it in a prime spot for both SoMa-based techies and the financiers who back them, but the company also makes its massages (and specially-designed massage chairs, which support you as a specialist works over your acupressure points) available in other locations like corporate offices and malls. The company’s website even suggests holding meetings and conferences in its studio, which would certainly be a memorable experience.

The size of the new funding was not disclosed, but chief executive Sam Keller told VentureWire it was “not far off from” the $2 million to $5 million that he was targeting earlier. It comes from individual investors including Philip Schlein of U.S. Venture Partners, former Yoga Works co-chief executive Rob Wrubel, Gary Grace of Supercuts and Rob Wilson, president of Tiburon Research Group. Keller plans to go out for more funding to finish the round in June, and to open at least one more studio by the end of this year.

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About the Author, Anthony Ha

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.

  • That was a nice break. Seeing venture deals outside web applications.
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