Beintoo, a young Italian startup, just announced the closing of its angel round, with an undisclosed sum.
The company was founded in September 2010 by Antonio Tomarchio and Filippo Privitera, two ex-Dada managers. Tomarchio previously founded AdRight, an ad server acquired by Dada in 2008 and transformed into what is now Simply.com. Co-founder Filippo Privitera has been working with Antonio Tomarchio since his AdRight days.
The Milan-based startup is developing an API framework that allows developers to immediately introduce what they called a ‘rewards layer’. Developers can decide a set of achievements and their users will be rewarded by receiving sponsored virtual goods from select advertisers when they reach the achievements. Developers monetize when their users receive a sponsored good and when there is a conversion into a real coupon. They just released an alpha version.
At the moment the product looks like a community where users can review and comment on apps, and thus seems to compete with Rome-based iWikiPhone, however the focus seems to lie on the API development.
By the way: You can find out about other interesting startup funding news stories in this list.
