Pygg’s stock is rising.
The Australian-born Twitter payment pioneer has banked $600,000 in new angel capital. Pollenizer, the startup incubator, raised most of the amount from a bunch of new and previous investors.
The new investors who get a share of the pie are Tasmania-based Andrew Spykes, Lend Lease CEO Anthony Pascoe, Hitwise founder Adrian Giles and Adrian Stone of the Melbourne-based incubator Angel Cube.
Previous investors include Yahoo!7 chief Rohan Lund; Tim Howard of Vividwireless, a division of Yahoo!7; and Pollenizer itself.
Facebook push ahead
“Investor enthusiasm has been high for Pygg in a way we have not seen before and we are all very proud of the demand we have seen from an impressive array of investors,” said Pollenizer Co-Founder Phil Morle. “It signals a renewed energy in the local start-up investment community and supports our view that Pygg has great things ahead of it.”
Pygg makes small micropayments as easy as sending a tweet. Its system enables, for example, you to pay your friend for the coffee. Pygg has linked with PayPal and some Australian banks to bring in money into an account, which is then linked to a Twitter handle.
Pollenizer says the first round of funding since Pygg’s founding last year came after “positive phase one results.” The Sydneyside startup plans to use the funds for a push into Facebook, the world’s most popular social networking site.
“The success of this funding round is a great vote of confidence in Pygg’s ability to drive change in the social payments space,” said Howard, a founding investor. “Pygg is in a unique position to adapt and respond to the market — delivering a product that is people focused, bank agnostic and fun to use.
Pollenizer is a three-year-old incubator that has invested $10 million in 25 startups and made one exit worth $40 million. It has 80 so-called “web-loving entrepreneurs,” covering all aspects of a web business and its portfolio of companies includes mogeneration, Posse, 99dresses and Spreets.
