Jetpac's Social Travel iPad App Grabs $2.4 Million From Khosla Ventures, Jerry Yang And Others
Jetpac, a gorgeous social travel application for iPad, has just scored $2.4 million in Series A funding from Khosla Ventures, Morado Venture Partners, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang and [redacted] …
Context & Ripple Effects
Jetpac's $2.4 million Series A is the latest data point in a two-year run of tablet-native social apps attracting outsized investor attention: Flipboard's $50 million round at a $200 million valuation in April 2011 established the curated-iPad-content template, and Socialcam followed in April 2012 with an angel roster of Yuri Milner, Tim Draper and Laurene Powell Jobs. Jetpac applies that curation playbook to travel photos rather than news.
The raise also lands inside a busy month for travel-tech capital — Hipmunk took $15 million in June 2012 to push internationally — and for Jerry Yang personally, whose angel check arrives while Yahoo's CEO search remains unresolved (sources say the announcement will not come at the annual meeting, per unconfirmed reports) just days after the confirmed breach of roughly 400,000 Yahoo! Voice credentials.
First-order effects
- Jetpac gains Series A runway from Khosla Ventures, Morado Venture Partners and Jerry Yang to scale its iPad travel-photo curation app beyond launch.
- Yang's personal investment signals continued post-Yahoo engagement with consumer social products, distinct from his operating role amid Yahoo's leadership limbo.
Second-order effects
- Travel discovery apps like Hipmunk now face a funded competitor attacking the same trip-planning moment from the inspiration side rather than search.
- The round gives other photo-curation startups a fresh comparable for pricing their own Series A conversations with consumer-focused funds.
Third-order effects
- If the Flipboard-to-Socialcam-to-Jetpac pattern holds, tablet-native curation becomes a repeatable venture category where celebrity angels function as distribution and validation, not just capital.
- Travel stacks may split into inspiration layers (social photo curation) and transaction layers (search and booking), forcing incumbents to decide which layer they own.
The trend: Consumer iPad apps are consolidating into a distinct venture category in which marquee angels and top-tier funds co-invest to back curation-first takes on existing verticals like travel.