Thoughts on BrightKite and Limbo

Wow.  BrightKite and Limbo have joined forces.

I don’t know why, but hearing about mergers and acquisitions of my friends companies leaves me shocked for a bit.  As an avid user, I’m both happy and sad.  I don’t know why, perhaps it is the loss of innocents of what the company could be or fears of how the service will change… but that is quickly replaced by the giant opprotunity they ususally have.

So BrightKite and Limbo are now BrightKite.

BrightKite was a 2007 TechStars team.  I met them at a BarCamp Boulder 2 in my old offices, where they met with David Cohen for the first time to chat about the possibility of being accepted into TechStars.  They were accepted weeks later, and over the summer, I got to know the great team.  At the time, they had just realeased LoopNote with a dream of being the social network at concerts through shortcodes.

From the TechStars blog:

I had the chance to chat with Martin on the phone tonight and he told me that they feel like they have found the perfect partner. He told me that this deal adds major support for Brightkite that they didn’t have before, such as strong business development capabilities and deep carrier relationships. Limbo previously raised about $15M in funding from Azure Capital Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and New Enterprise Associates.

Brad Feld also has some thoughts on the deal.

Sounds fantastic.  I am pumped.

It has been a great journey watching the team and application grow.  I want to close this just as BrightKite did with their post after investor day in 2007:

Services like Twitter ask “What are you doing?”, Facebook asks “Who are you friends?”… Well Brightkite asks “Where are you?”.

Think of the possibilities….

Yes, think of the possibilities.