And you think apps that track your location are bad! Quettra, a mobile intelligence startup that compiles massive amounts of information about mobile users, just closed a seed round in the amount of $2.9 million. Quettra knows that mobile advertisers can never have enough data about customers. And investors know that, too. This explains why several big names threw down dollars at the startup during the funding round, including Google Ventures, Horizon Ventures, Data Collective, Miramar Digital Ventures, CrunchFund, and SV Angel. Several angel investors participated, too.
Quettra, a mobile advertising startup founded by the former head of search and discovery for Google’s Play Store Ankit Jain, today announced that it has raised a $2.9 million seed round. Investors include CrunchFund (which was founded by TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington), Data Collective, Google Ventures, Horizons Ventures, Miramar Digital Venturesand SV Angel, as well as angel investors Amitt Mahajan, Anthony Ha (the director at Google, not our writer), Anna Patterson, Carol Sands, Greg Badros and others. In addition, China’s Sungy Mobile Limited (the company behind the GO Launcher and Locker Android apps) joined as a strategic investor. Sadly, Quettra isn’t quite ready to talk about the details of its product yet. As Jain told me, however, the idea for the service was born out of what he learned about the mobile ecosystem during his time at Google. “Seeing apps grow was exciting,” he told me. “But it showed me a set of problems that are fundamental to the way the mobile ecosystem works.” Specifically, he argues that only Google, Apple and Facebook really understand their users in a mobile-first way. The rest of the ecosystem does not. By moving to mobile, online advertisers have lost their understanding of the user.