In 2011, two former finance executives Sam Lundin and Chris Yeung left their jobs to start a company. They moved into startup incubator WeWork Labs and bootstrapped Vimbly, an activity-booking platform. Now they've raised their first bit of outside capital, $540,000 from ten angel investors.
On Vimbly, you can find everything from trapeze classes in New York City to sword swallowing to cooking classes at the Institute of Culinary Education. It was recently featured as a Mother's Day gift-finding solution on CBS. Investors include professionals at Apax Partners, Deutsche Bank, and Macquarie Capital Advisors.
Lundin and Yeung worked for Perry Capital and BlackRock respectively. The pair met at Cornell University and founded Vimbly after Lundin conducted a painful search for a local photography class. Vimbly shows activities on a map of New York, and allows users to search by date, price range and more. It's similar to TechStars company Classtivity and education startup, Course Horse but with the search experience of Expedia.
Right now, Vimbly is only available in New York, but the founders say the funding will help them expand to five markets, including Boston and Washington, D.C. There are 5,000 activities on the site.
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