Polar has unfrozen $1.2 million to continue enhancing its product, a free iOS app that creates “photo polls” to share with their friends.

When faced with whether to go with cupcakes or cake for a wedding dessert, or wondering whether their friends find public speaking more stressful than an interview, people can quickly create a survey by using the built-in image search feature and send it out to their social network. Their friends and colleagues can then vote and comment on the question to provide instant feedback.

Since its launch, Polar has seen impressive traction due to its focus on user-experience and design. The app has fun little features that make it enjoyable to use, particularly for those of us who love cute cartoon animals. The company claims to have hit 1.5 million votes in the first month of its launch, which then doubled to over 3 million votes in January. The new release explores topics and tags, see how friends vote, find friends, and skips uninteresting polls.

Founders Luke Wroblewski and Jeff Cole came up with a concept they called the “new tech mullet,” which means building a product with “simple mobile interactions up front, ‘big data’ in the back.” They founded the Input Factory to build apps that embody this philosophy. Polar is the first.

Wroblewski previously founded a startup called Bagcheck that Twitter acquired in 2011. He also worked as the chief design architect at Yahoo and served as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Benchmark Capital, eBay, and NCSA. Cole was a cofounder of PatientsLikeMe, which the MIT Tech Review voted as one of the 50 most innovative companies in 2012.

The early investors are a high profile crew. Founder of Yahoo Jerry Yang, John Lilly of Greylock Partners, Maynard Webb from the Webb Investment Network, Ash Patel of Morado Ventures, Brian O’Malley and Mike Dauber at Battery Ventures, Don Dodge from Google, former Twitter executive Sam Pullara, and others participated in this round.

The money will go toward making the product “better and more relevant” as well as adding new people to the small team.

Polar is not the only mobile-first decision-making app out there. Seesaw launched earlier this month with over $1 million in seed financing to help people ask efficiently ask their friends for advice. People are becoming increasingly reliant on their smartphones to make the hundreds of choices that make up in everyday life. When your friend can’t be in the store to provide friendly feedback on a blouse, or you can’t decide what to order at a hot new restaurant, mobile phones are a tool for quickly soliciting answers to these questions.

My first task? Using these apps to figure out which decision-making app to use.

Photo Credit: Gerald Simmons/ Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

[Disclosure: Aaron Gotwalt is married to VentureBeat reporter Jolie O'Dell, but she does not cover his company. -Ed.]

People make hundreds of small decisions every single day. Do I wear red or blue? What do I want for lunch? Which bar should I go to for happy hour?

Seesaw launched its mobile app today to help people make decisions like these. 

The iOS app connects people with their friends to ask for opinions and receive feedback. When faced with a choice, you post a photo of your options in a text message, on Facebook, or on Twitter as a quick poll. Your friends then respond by voting, providing in instant antidote to indecision.

As I download the app, my notoriously indecisive (Libra) mind starts to whirl with the possibilities. I have spent far too many hours agonizing over whether I want my bedroom curtains to be purple or blue, questioning if I can pull off an empire waistline, and stressing between two equally tasty-sounding entrees.

Seesaw quiets the back-and-forth in my brain my reaching out to my social network for assistance. I determine whether to post a query privately or publicly, and can also contribute to other people’s choices.

The concept is simple, but the reality is that soliciting the input of our peers is a fundamental part of decision-making, with or without the app. Seesaw leverages mobile technology and the power of social networks to streamline the process.

Founders Aaron Gotwalt, Jesse Engle, and Kyle Sollenberger formerly worked together on social media marketing tool CoTweet, which sold to ExactTarget in 2010. CoTweet investors Freestyle Capital, Baseline Ventures, and First Round Capital, have invested in the trio again, and Seesaw is backed by $1.1 million in seed funding.

The company was founded in August of 2012, closed its seed round in September, and launched the beta in December. It is available for free in the app store.