FitnessKeeper scoops up $1.1M to build out fitness app

Startup FitnessKeeper, the parent company of the RunKeeper smartphone app, has raised $1.11 million and will use the money to build out its nine-person operation and dive into the highly competitive world of now-fashionable mobile fitness applications.

The RunKeeper iPhone app uses GPS locating to track your distance, time, elevation, pace and path on a map and has caught the eye of several major investors since the company was founded two years ago, primarily because it has kept up with rapidly developing technologies.

The app now has features that ­let others watch your progress, live, online, as they trace your mileage and can see varying levels of your workout. In addition, it now offers mobile fitness training and routine plans to help runners train for events.

It also raised eyebrows last year when founder and CEO Jason Jacobs ran the Boston Marathon (pictured) dressed as an iPhone to promote the business.

The Boston-based company has raised $1.51 million thus far, including $400,000 in seed money from LaunchCapital last fall, along with angel investors Viewlogic founder Will Herman, BzzAgent CEO Dave Balter and Compete.com CEO Don McLagan.

Its latest round of funding was led by well-known Silicon Valley VC firm O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, which has poured money into startup darlings Bit.ly and Foursquare, and included several new unnamed angels and all its former investors.

“We liked [OATV managing director and co-founder] Bryce [Roberts] and the OATV gang from the minute we met them,” Jacobs said in a company blog post today. “Bryce (who also invested in our friends at Foursquare) is an avid cyclist, and like us, is a big believer in mobile/social/fitness/quantified self.”