Early Stage Funding comes to Social Telephony.

Hackathons put on by the likes of TechCrunch, StartupWeekend and others have spawned new products – and sometimes companies – literally overnight. Such is the way in the world of open-source, open API’s and cloud computing. While many outputs end up as little more than fodder for Friday night drinks, some catch adequate fire to propel them all the way to market. GroupMe, conceived during a TechCrunch event this past Spring, is one of the latter.

GroupMe, as unveiled in this post on VentureBeat, aims to brings simple group communications to the mobile:

GroupMe lets you sign up for a group chat via a mobile web interface. Each GroupMe chat is given a unique number that texts you, “You just created a new group on GroupMe! Now add some friends by replying #add with your friends’ names and numbers. Texting that unique number sends your SMS message to everyone in the group. Users can also institute a group voice chat by calling their group’s unique GroupMe number.

Conferencing is almost as old as the phone, but remains a principally business utility. Some are seeking to monetize family-type conferencing, and while the market seems obvious, it is highly unproven. But GroupMe’s take is indeed a little different and perhaps why A-lister early stage investors jumped in only a few short months after its creation.

First, they’re basing their model on what we used to call the ‘ubiquitous device’ – the telephone. We don’t say it anymore because, well, it goes without saying. But these days, phone-based applications that come to market are either targeting the smartphone community, or more likely, one or two smartphone models. GroupMe works on any phone. Secondly, instead of fighting the decline in voice usage as it gives way to texting, GroupMe is embracing it by making SMS the center of its user-interface, and by offering both voice and SMS as communications modes.

Lastly, I expect GroupMe to benefit from the new ‘communication value chain’ –> we like to text or chat first before entering a phone call (one to one or one to many). GroupMe makes this easy.

GroupMe is only in its Alpha stage, but with some solid early finding behind it and the cell phone carrying population as its addressable market, it has a shot. The beauty of group apps, is if they hit, they have built-in viral. Revenue, not obvious here, will need to come from some kind of contextual marketing. Or perhaps the approach may catch the attention of business conferencers. Either way, I’m glad to see more entrepreneurs trying to expand how we group communicate….and keeping people talking, not just texting. We need it.