Tour Tech Startup Redeam Turns to Industry Vets for Funding
Skift Take
Redeam doesn't recommend places to visit, call itself "a Facebook for travel", or indulge in other startup pitch clichés. It strives instead to build a solution to a pain point companies will pay to fix — namely, automating paper voucher redemptions for attractions. How refreshingly uncool.
Redeam, a travel startup based in Boulder, Colorado, strives to solve one of the travel industry's least sexy problem.
The company tells tourist sites, museums, and other attraction operators that it can help automate and digitize many of their manual processes currently done with paper and Excel spreadsheets.
Nevertheless, Redeam said Monday it closed a $7.7 million Series A funding round.
The funding amount isn't as notable as some of the angel investors contributing to it.
Angel investors include Barney Harford, chief operating officer of Uber, United Airlines board member, and former CEO of Orbitz; Rob Torres, managing director, travel, at Google; and John Love, former chief technology officer at Concur.
On the venture side, Thayer Ventures is participating. This is the first announced investment for its Thayer Ventures III, a fund with more than $100 million that is focused on travel technology investments that we reported on a year ago.
Some of Thayer's early investments have included revenue management software provider Duetto, which in February raised an $80 million Series D; marketing analytics company Adara; and vacation rental management company Sonder.
JetBlue Technology Ventures has also participated in the round, having previously invested in roughly a dozen travel-related companies, such as insurance arbitrage company Flyr, ground transport search business Mozio, and the service for booking hotel rooms by the hour, Recharge.
Vertical Venture Partners led the round, in its first foray into travel. The relatively young firm is
