Sosh.com – Raises $10.1 Million from Khosla Ventures

Mobile recommendations are still a big deal, and they’re helping Sosh.com raise a $10.1 million round of VC money.

Using a combination of local listings and user-supplied data points, Sosh recommends events, places, and activities that are relevant to its users’ interests. Instead of taking the Foursquare/Yelp approach, where people are searching for locations, Sosh brings the locations to users based on what it knows about them.

That approach has been an attractive one for investors, who are helping Sosh raise another $10.1 million. The latest funding round was led by Khosla Ventures. This is Sosh’s second round of institutional funding. To date, the startup has raised $14 million since its founding in 2010.

Joining Sosh alongside the new cash is Keith Rabois, a longtime board member at Yelp and former chief operating officer at Square. Rabois’s experience in the local space should be huge for Sosh as it continues to grow.

Speaking of growth, Sosh is currently only available in New York City and San Francisco, but the company is planning expansions to Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles. The cash infusion should help speed that process along.

The team is focused on laying the groundwork. Before evangelizing to small businesses and artisans, Sosh first needs to penetrate the market fully (expansion) and really understand what you want to do, before you’ve ever even thought about it.

With the funding, Sosh will bring its activity concierge to 10 major cities over the next year, hiring engineers and editorial curators to keep up with scale and “keep the quality bar high,”.

Sosh Was founded by Rishi Mandal, Vivek Patel and Rod Begbie who is also serving as the CTO of the company.

Sosh is a members-only site that helps people discover things to do in their local area with the addition of an integrated social network. Sosh is being built by Offline Labs, a stealthy startup founded by former Google and Slide employees.

Via: VentureBeat

Image Credit: Sosh_fr