Opinionaided raises $1M in seed round

The mobile Q&A app gets support from General Catalyst, SoftBank, and DFJ

If you haven't experienced the addictive power of Opinionaided, brace yourself...it's intense. The mobile Q&A app lets users post questions about anything and get instant answers in real-time. The company announced Wednesday that has raised $1 million in an over-subscribed round of seed funding from General Catalyst, SoftBank Capital, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Several angel investors also participated in the round, including Mark Wachen of DreamIt Ventures, Jonah Goodhart of Point Ventures Group, early Facebook advisor Karl Jacob, and Vince Monical, former head of Emerging Platforms for Google.

Once you give the app a try, it's little wonder it received such a strong show of support. A user can post a question and receive a deluge of responses instantly, in real-time. Example: I posted a question 15 minutes ago as to how many people shop at the Fox News store, based on this picture I took recently in the Houston airport:  

So far I've gotten 38 votes, with 22% giving the question a thumbs up and 78% giving the question a thumbs down. Seven people apparently just don't care.

The process is simple and straightforward: users can connect via Facebook and post a question along with an associated image, select the age and sex of the users they want to query, or keep it within their own intimate circle of friends. 

While waiting for responses, users can browse among the questions posted by other users and vote, comment, or offer an opinion. Users can select among different categories of questions, including Food, Drink & Lifestyle; Music, Movies & TV; Dating & Relationships; Health & Fitness; Parenting & Family; Pets & Animals; and so on. And to avoid the onslaught of tween exuberance, users can select specific age groups when looking for questions to vote on. 

The app is available on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, and to date it has facilitated 40 million responses to some 500,000 questions, but that number is likely changing every second as questions compel numerous instant responses. 

“We’re filling a pain point out there that hasn’t been solved by any other social media service, big or small. We’re delivering super-fast opinions to virtually any question on-the-fly,” said Opinionaided CEO Dan Kurani in a prepared statement. “We believe the future is bright for real-time opinions and we have just scratched the surface of the mobile medium."

Opinionaided will use the latest round of funds to expand to other mobile platforms other than iOS. Rival Q&A service ChaCha recently raised $20 million.

Image source: itunes.apple.com