Gogii debuts Kleiner-backed chat app

June 2, 2009 | Paul Boutin | Comments |

What’s group chat? It’s an SMS conversation involving 3 or more people. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers thinks it’s hot enough to have led a $5 million funding round for Gogii, maker of the textPlus app for the iPhone.

textPlus is a chat client built on top of SMS. Somewhere off in the clouds of the Internet, Gogii’s servers wrangle multi-way SMS sessions and present them as one group conversation on your phone.

• You can have a true group text conversation with as many people as you like, just like a chat room.
• People can drop in and out of ongoing conversations.
• You don’t need an iPhone. Any SMS phone will work.
• No sign up needed. The iPhone app is free.

For now, adMob advertising is the sole revenue source. Gogii CEO Scott Lahman said that they’re considering other ways to make textPlus pay. The potential market is “everyone with a text plan,” Lahman says.

Kleiner Perkins partner Matt Murphy says his firm backed Gogii because of the management team — Lahman, president Austin Murray and chief creative office Zachary Norman are veterans of JAMDAT Mobile, a game and ringtone maker sold to Electronic Arts for $680 million in 2005. “Don’t underrate the potential for ads” as a moneymaker, he said in a phone call. “Text is 2x the size of the rest of mobile.”

Once you’ve tried a 3 or 4 party chat over SMS, it’s hard to believe it’s not already a way of life for thumb-typing teens. Will it catch on? Tatango and 3jam have similar products, but textPlus’ iPhone app makes it prettier. Don’t kid yourself that this doesn’t matter.

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About the Author, Paul Boutin

Paul (paul@venturebeat.com) covers Apple & the iPhone, social networks & social media, digital music & video, and any crazy Internet story. Paul wrote and edited for Valleywag from 2006-2008, after several years with Wired magazine and Slate. He writes regularly for The New York Times' technology section and sometimes for Wired and The Wall Street Journal. He studied computer science at MIT in the early 1980s, and worked as a software developer and network administrator for 15 years before becoming a professional writer. Follow him on Twitter at @paulboutin, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • Tim E.
    I don't get two things about this.

    First, chat engines are "yesterday's" approach to text-based communication. The apps that are building communities (I personally use WhosHere for almost all my texting) *and* enable free text messaging are much more interesting. In one moment, I am texting with my friends, next I am 'meeting' and chatting with someone new either nearby or in Japan.

    Second, $5m for an app where there two other already doing this. Scratching head.
  • We're working on quite a few awesome things at GOGII. You can check out our site (in beta) at http://beta.GOGII.com

    Would love to hear more of your feedback.
  • DH
    This sounds pretty rad. Been trying to find a solid app to achieve this for awhile now. pumped!
  • So rad!
  • jd
    This is possibly interesting but I just don't understand at all why they would get $5m before gaining any traction. In fact, I think that kind of raise hurts their chances for success.
  • jd
    3 MBAs, an EVP of Corp Dev, a CMO and a Chief Creative Officer???
  • Thank you for the feedback and support Paul. The GOGII team worked hard on this one, and there are a bunch of cool things to come from us in the near future.