Monday, March 26, 2007

AirPrint gets new funding, customers

By Efrain Viscarolasaga

Since its $1.45 million first round of funding last spring, Framingham's AirPrint Networks Inc., a maker of cell-phone printing devices, has added new board members, established a distribution program and added additional capital to its first round.

With much of that internal infrastructure in place, the company has also begun working to get its cell phone printer into the hands of paying partners, and over the past month it has signed two such deals -- with Florida's Movie

Tickets.com Inc. and California's Coupons.com Inc.

While officials would not discuss the financial details of the deals, both are exclusive deals and allow consumers to print coupons or movie tickets from a cell phone.

AirPrint Networks founder and CEO Mark Thirman said that since the launch of the company last year he has seen interest in the ability to print small documents from a cell phone coming from more industries than he expected.

"Everybody says they are working to get rid of paper but, in the end, people like paper documentation. Grocers, movie theaters, sporting events. They all still use paper," he said.

Others share Thirman's opinion, including one of two new AirPrint board members added last fall, Matthew Growney, chief strategy officer at Wakefield-based IT consulting firm Darwin Partners Inc., and a co-founder of Motorola Ventures in Lexington.

"The future will never completely trade atoms for bits," said Growney. "The advantage of having a paper copy for transactions is its ability to physically audit, document, locate and monetize without too much additional technology."

Growney joined AirPrint's board in November. The other new board member, William Hulbig of Cotuit Capital in Cotuit, joined shortly thereafter.

AirPrint's original $1.45 million first round of funding from Japanese electronics maker Alps Electric Co. Ltd was raised to approximately $2 million with the addition of Hulbig and Cotuit Capital. With an established distribution partner in Florida's Brightstar Corp. announced last spring, Thirman said he will soon be looking to raise another $2 million to $5 million in a second round.

"We've solved the distribution challenges and we've got some early development deals, so we think we are on our way," said Thirman.