September 30, 2008
- Montreal, Canada
Tungle, the ultimate scheduling service, announced today that it has secured $5 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Waltham, MA-based Commonwealth Capital Ventures. Existing investors, including JLA Ventures and Desjardins Venture Capital, also participated in the round. The funds will be used to accelerate the company’s marketing and engineering activities.
“We chose to work with Commonwealth based on its excellent long-term track record of supporting entrepreneurs who are building successful businesses focused on professionals,” said Marc Gingras, chief executive officer and founder of Tungle. “As we expand our focus toward commercialization, we are excited to surround ourselves with knowledgeable and seasoned veterans in Commonwealth Capital Ventures, JLA Ventures, and Desjardins Venture Capital.”
Along with closing this funding round, Tungle also unveiled the beta version of its free, next-generation web scheduling service. It allows users to dynamically propose times to meet with one or many people. Tungle also allows its customers to securely share their free/busy calendar across company boundaries with any other Tungle user. It is the first to work with Outlook—with or without Microsoft Exchange, Google Calendar, Apple iCal, Entourage for Mac, or on its own. People can go to the Tungle website at www.tungle.com and start using the beta version of Tungle right away. No registration or download is required to try out the service.
“Tungle addresses a significant pain for all busy professionals,” said Jeffrey Hurst, general partner with Commonwealth Capital Ventures. “The Tungle team has the experience and drive to capitalize on this opportunity and revolutionize the online scheduling and groupware market.”
Jeff Hurst will join Marc Gingras; Pierre Donaldson, partner with JLA Ventures and the BlackBerry Partners Fund; Daniel Boisvert, chief executive officer of Strategika International; and Stephane Marceau, president of IPEXA Development, on Tungle’s Board of Directors.
Tungle’s service is based on proprietary algorithms that assure that Tungle customers will never be double booked as their availability changes. As blocks of times are proposed for a meeting, they are dynamically updated with the latest availability of the organizer, and with the other Tungle customers that have responded to the meeting invitation. Once the meeting is booked, the organizer’s calendar is automatically updated, and each invitee will receive a meeting invitation formatted for their specific calendar application.
In addition to being accessible from any browser, Tungle is optimized for all mobile environments. Professionals on the move – checking email on their BlackBerry, iPhone or any other smartphone - can respond to a Tungle meeting invitation via a link. A click on that link launches a smartphone browsing session, formatted for each device’s display. No download or registration is required.
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