Lark, which launched a wearable silent alarm on-stage at TechCrunch’s Disrupt conference back in 2010, has raised $3.1 million of an intended $3.6 million round of funding, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
I’ve emailed the company and its CEO Julia Hu for confirmation, and I’ll update this post if I hear back. The filing doesn’t specify the investors in the new round, but intriguingly, it does identify Weili Dai, president and co-founder of Marvell, as as member of its board of directors.
Although Lark started out with a silent alarm, it expanded its product lineup to include a sleep coach product called Lark Pro and a more general device and app called Larklife. The company announced Larklife in October of 2012, and Hu described it to me as a way for folks who aren’t as serious about fitness or weight loss to track and get actionable recommendations about their diet, exercise, sleep, and more. Like Lark’s other devices, Larklife was sold in Apple’s retail stores (and elsewhere).
I actually tried the service out for a few months late last year and early this year. During that time, everyone kept asking me about the blue wristband (the look definitely wasn’t as subtle as, say the Nike+ Fuel Band). I thought it had potential, but eventually I decided that it wasn’t providing enough value to justify the (minor) inconvenience — and, perhaps more damningly, the ridicule that it prompted from my roommate. In the months since, while I’ve seen an increasing number of people around San Francisco wearing some sort of fitness device, it usually isn’t the Larklife wristband.
Lark previously raised $1 million in funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners, CrunchFund (which, like TechCrunch, was founded by Michael Arrington), and others.
via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/bpRFmU4QiR8/
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