Startups Compete To Win The Mobile App CRM Battle

The rapid growth of mobile device use has created major gaps in CRM capability. As smartphone adoption has exploded, companies have scrambled to launch mobile apps, many of which are disconnected from an organization’s broader CRM capabilities.

Many organizations have little knowledge about the people using their mobile apps, how and why they are using them, how to effectively communicate with them, and how to support them — all of which are critical to providing a tailored mobile customer experience. Indeed, failing any one of these things can lead to users abandoning an app at a time when the competition among apps is increasingly fierce:

• The average phone in 2013 has 41 apps, up from 28 apps the year before (Nielsen, 2012).
• Average user retention rate for a mobile app is 54 percent after 30 days and 35 percent after 90 days (Flurry, 2012).

In order to drive a differentiated experience and service level for every mobile customer, mobile businesses should strive to segment their user bases on a variety of metrics and then leverage the data to drive user acquisition, retention, engagement, transactions and upsell, as well as cross-sell opportunities.

In addition, it is incredibly important for the business to measure the customer experience: Is the app delivering the right service levels to the right customers? What is the level of customer satisfaction and how does it compare to user retention, user engagement and app reviews?Often overlooked but equally important is enabling users to communicate with businesses via the mobile app. Rather than a one-way channel, users should feel empowered to provide feedback or instantly and easily get help without needing to leave the app, send and email or make a phone call. Remember the user retention rate: If a frustrated or confused user leaves an app, they’re far less likely to return.

The Mobile App CRM Players

Many businesses are leveraging CRM for their web and retail businesses, but have yet to apply their CRM strategy to mobile customers. Indeed, mobile-app CRM is a continuation of traditional CRM that sits inside the mobile app, enabling the same capabilities — but for mobile customers. Here are some of the startups that are helping businesses bridge the CRM gap on mobile.

• Flurry helps answer the first question that organizations have: “Who are my mobile app users and how are they using my app?” Though an ad network by business model, Flurry is used by mobile apps to provide CRM metrics, such as number of active users, user retention rates, and more. Flurry helps segment users into categories and measures ROI on user-acquisition spend compared with user-retention and engagement rates.
• Urban Airship provides a simple way for apps to communicate with their audience via push notifications and supports context-aware notifications. It’s among the most popular third-party notification platforms used by mobile apps today.
• Crittercism initially focused on providing mobile developers with a platform to identify and analyze crashes and bugs in their mobile apps similar to Crashlytics (acquired by Twitter) and BugSense. More New Relic than Salesforce, Crittercism now also offers broader application performance management with system logs and tracing.
• AppBoy offers analytics, segmentation and communication from one dashboard and has the ability to manage rich marketing profiles at an individual user level. It also allows messaging via multiple channels: push notifications, in-app messages, and email.
• Helpshift recently launched the world’s first native customer service and support solution for mobile applications. Helpshift enables businesses to provide a contextualized mobile customer experience by unlocking customer information and device diagnostics for in-app service, support, and marketing. Helpshift also integrates with enterprise CRM systems like Oracle and Salesforce for a seamless CRM solution across business units.

Forward-thinking businesses are realizing the need for integrated CRM capability across all revenue streams, the value of a multi-channel view of their users, and the ability to interact effectively with these users across their lifecycle. Any organization that has deployed CRM software would be wise to integrate it with its mobile app, just as it would integrate it with web and call centers.

And that raises the question: Why should mobile app CRM be different from traditional CRM? The answer is that it shouldn’t be. And traditional CRM vendors who have been slow to move have provided a unique opportunity for these fast-moving startups to capture this market.

While it would not be surprising to see enterprise CRM vendors like Salesforce, Oracle or SAP acquire any of these startups to fill the glaring gap in their offerings, a more interesting question is whether these startups can be the enterprise CRM behemoths of tomorrow. In other words – can the next big enterprise CRM be mobile first? We may be a few years away but it’s possible. One thing is clear: We’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg.

Note: Nexus Venture Partners is an investor in Helpshift

Justin's all-natural butter - From Farmers' Market to Whole Foods

The founder of Justin's explains how his company shook up the nut butter category.

 

 

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In 2003, Justin Gold began peddling his homemade organic nut butters at a farmers' market in Boulder, Colorado. With just $25,000 in seed money raised from family members, Gold planned to build a strong local following for his company, Justin's, and expand slowly. In 2004, he persuaded a local Whole Foods to stock his product.

Today, Justin's line of organic nut butters, organic chocolate peanut butter cups, and all-natural candy bars is available in more than 15,000 national retail stores, including Whole Foods, Target, and Starbucks.

The 20-employee business generated $20 million in sales last year. That represented three-year growth of 614 percent, enough to place Justin's at No. 594 on the 2012 Inc.5000. "We're a 10-year overnight success," says Gold, who is now eyeing convenience and drug stores. Here, he offers tips for getting onto store shelves, then into shopping carts.

1. Man the front lines. "When you first get into Whole Foods, you pinch yourself," Gold says. "You might think all the hard work is done. But most products fail." To boost his chances of success, Gold started by selling just three products: 16-ounce jars of cinnamon peanut butter, honey peanut butter, and honey almond butter--for $5 to $10 a pop in a Boulder store.

He delivered the jars, stocked the shelves, and manned the sample table, where he got valuable feedback from shoppers. "It gave me time to work out my flavors and my message," he says.

2. Start local; Thnk National. In the beginning, Gold focused his expansion efforts primarily on local health-food stores and specialty shops. But he also met with national retailers at trade shows and in their offices to make his pitch.

"They told me the same story: 'Come back next year and we'll see how your sales improve,' " Gold says. "But I wanted them to know who I was." The strategy paid off: By 2008, Justin's nut butters were available in Whole Foods stores around the country. The next year, they launched in Wegmans, Safeway, and Kroger stores.

3. Build grass-roots loyalty. In lieu of traditional advertising, Justin's sends free products to brand ambassadors and encourages them to spread the word. Some ambassadors are fans who have contacted the company via email or Facebook.

Justin's has also recruited influential fitness and nutrition experts, such as Dave Ellis, a sports dietitian who stocks the training facilities of many professional sports teams with Justin's squeeze packs. Unsolicited plugs from celebrity fans, including actress Eva Mendes, have also added some extra honey.

4. Shake up your category. A big factor in Justin's success has been its individual squeeze packs, which are geared toward campers, dieters, and brown baggers. Gold, an avid backpacker, drew inspiration for the product from the high-energy gel packs sold at outdoor-gear stores.

Justin's 1.15-ounce nut-butter packs, which retail for 50 cents to $1 each, have helped boost profit margins and set Justin's apart from rival brands. "We breathed life into a stale category," Gold says. "If I was just making nut butter, I wouldn't be here today.

GymFlow helps users beat the crowd at gyms

There's an app for figuring out the times when the gym is going to be mega-crowded.
GymFlow this week launched an early tester program for its Apple and Android app, which promises to give users a real-time measure of how crowded local gyms are. A group of USC students created the app last fall and tested it out at the school’s Lyon Recreation Center. Chief Executive Jimmy Liu said peak hour traffic at the gym had decreased by 20% within a month of launching.
“The idea came from a problem that we ourselves had,” he said. “As we kept building out, we saw this was a problem for other universities and other gyms.”

GymFlow gathers data directly from the turnstile system at USC’s gym. It’s doing the same at Cal State Los Angeles and plans to start at UCLA this fall. The data is graphed and tracked, so users can see crowd predictions for specific times.
Liu said he’s working to reach deals with major chains such as Gold’s Gym, 24 Hour Fitness and L.A. Fitness to tap into their systems. The chains did not respond to requests for comment.
In the meantime, GymFlow is giving gym users incentives to check in through the app so that it can crowdsource data and pressure gyms to adopt the service.
It's offering early testers giveaways such as gym bags, T-shirts and reimbursements for a month of gym membership.
The app is free to users. GymFlow’s income comes from charging gyms a fee for the analytics. Liu said he’s pitching the app as a way to retain members, noting that as many as 40% of members cancel yearly.
“Our app helps members find the least crowded time to work out,” Liu said. “That makes members happier and they are less likely to cancel their membership.”
At a monthly cost of about $150, he said a gym would be making money if even four members chose not to cancel. The crowd feature could be integrated into a gym’s official app.
“If a few people use this, the whole membership benefits,” he said.
Though gyms are the primary focus, Liu sees promise in the concept of documenting real-time traffic at any venue. Waze, an app that documents real-time traffic on roadways, recently sold to Google for $1.1 billion.
GymFlow was one of 10 USC start-ups, out of 100 applicants, accepted this year into the school’s first incubator, the Viterbi Startup Garage. Working in a Marina del Rey office space made to look like a garage, Liu and his team of three have been working 12-hour days lately. They’ve been tinkering with the app, meeting with investors and mentors and bouncing ideas off of fellow start-ups.
Los Angeles angel investor Paige Craig is among the company’s advisors.
By late August, Liu wants to hit 100,000 downloads. USC’s gym has about 3,000 daily users. GymFlow reached 2,000 downloads within the first couple of weeks.
Post-summer plans are unclear, though Liu said he wants to keep GymFlow in California.

STOREFRONT FOR POP-UP SHOP MARKETPLACE

The short-term commercial rentals marketplace Storefront announced yesterday that it has raised $1.6M in seed funding from  Mohr Davidow Ventures, Great Oaks Venture Capital, 500 Startups, BoxGroup and Sand Hill Angels. Storefront launched out of startup accelerator Angelpad in San Francisco last fall and has already helped 100 pop-ups for brands and listed over 3M square feet in retail space. The startup plans to use the funding for expansion (check out their Storefront listings in NYC) and additional hires to complement its 6-person team.

While the long-term popularity of pop-up shops might raise an eyebrow, Storefront’s market is built on top of the 10% vacancy rate for commercial spaces. Rather than charging broker fees for the space, Storefront collects referral fees from associated purchases and services related to setting up the space, such as furniture, staff and insurance. With a timely market entry, Storefront hopes to make it just as easy to open a shop offline as it now is to open one online.

Health Insurer’s App Helps Users Track Themselves

A smartphone app that launches this week from the health insurance companyAetna helps users monitor their own health-tracking data. As costs spiral upward, health-care companies could eventually turn to such apps as a way to encourage healthy behavior.

At a Mobile Summit in San Francisco last week, Martha Wofford, consumer platform vice president at Aetna, said the company would launch an app called CarePass to serve as a portal for an individual’s health-related activity and, if he allows it, his medical records, too.

Through CarePass, a person could enter a health goal—say, fitting into his jeans next month—and get personalized suggestions for how to go about achieving it. CarePass can integrate data from wearable tracking devices like Fitbit or Jawbone’s UP, as well as apps like MapMyRun; it can take into account doctor visits, prescriptions, and blood pressure or cholesterol records. It will also point users to trustworthy symptom and diagnosis information through iTriage, software that Aetna acquired last year.

A few other health-care providers, such as Kaiser Permanente, are getting into this area, but Aetna appears to be pushing forward more quickly than most. CarePass, for example, will include APIs so that patients can give access to their data to third parties, including doctors or other software developers, Wofford says.

Nearly 50,000 health-related mobile apps are already out there, letting people collect data about their well-being and interact with doctors and pharmacies from their mobile devices.

With the entire U.S. health-care system under pressure to reduce costs, insurance companies could start creating financial incentives for people to voluntarily share this data and improve their health and fitness.

President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, Wofford says, allows insurers to increase so-called “wellness incentives” to up to 30 percent of a premium, up from 20 percent before. This would allow employer health plans to create bigger “carrots” for their employees to go to the gym or use a Fitbit. Under U.S. law, incentives have to be based on behaviors—say, joining a gym—rather than outcomes, such as losing 10 pounds versus two pounds, Wofford says. The same rules do not apply in Europe.

CarePass will be offered to individuals at first, but Aetna plans to launch a portal for employers, too. There they will receive anonymous and aggregated data about the overall health trends of their employees, Wofford says.

As health-care costs increase for employers as well, they are likely to become more aggressive in looking for ways to reduce costs.

“I think it will be led by employers,” says Wofford. “We see some more aggressive employers like Safeway, where they are driving outcomes by swabbing the cheeks of employees to see whether they are smoking or not.” U.S. law says that smokers can be charged higher premiums.

More data is not enough to improve health outcomes, however. And the data can be difficult to make use of. Zeo, a company that made a sleep-tracking device, and which was a pioneer in this area, recently went out business because people found its data too complicated to understand, Wofford says. “If we make it convenient enough, the question is whether we can actually drive behavior change,” she says.

App helps organizers bring local community events to life

Platforms such as Gidsy have already offered a way for locals to find new experiences in their city. Now a new app called Commune enables event organizers to promote community projects and recruit volunteers to bring them to life.

Initially created for students at Colombia, and later launched at New York University and Oxford University in the UK, the app aims to provide a way to raise awareness of events among local communities. It is currently trialling its Neighborhood NYC Beta to expand its features for larger regional groups in order to residents become more aware of the projects happening in their area. Organizers can upload details of their event and then choose to invite individual friends, members of a network such as a college, anyone living in a particular part of the city, or the entire city. As well as recruiting attendees for their event, planners can also put out calls for help and volunteering. Users can potentially use the app to ascertain interest in an event before they even start planning it, making it a Songkick-style platform for community events.

Bringing event promotion and information to the hyperlocal scale, Commune hopes to foster better connections between the different communities that live in the same district. It is available for free on the App Store. Are there other ways to make it easier for local residents to collaborate on projects that will benefit them all?

Website: www.oncommune.com

Social network for hospital patients connects users via similar interests

When it come to hospital stays – especially lengthy ones – it can make a big difference to help patients feel as comfortable as possible. We recently saw Scotland’s Hospital Passport scheme aim to put children at ease, and now France-based startup Hôpital Affinité wants to connect those in hospital with fellow patients that share similar interests.

Hoping to be implemented in institutions across the country, the startup offers a platform that enables patients to fill out their interests, alongside their time of stay. The service then offers recommendations of current patients who enjoy the same things. Users can chat over the system – on their laptop or smartphone – before viewing a map of the building to find out where their friend’s bed is. Since patients often rely on visits from relatives and friends for company, Hôpital Affinité aims to make patient stays more enjoyable by connecting them with like-minded guests. At the same time, hospitals can also communicate important announcements to their patients through the service.

The startup was recently named the winner of the Doctors 2.0 & You prize and is looking for hospitals to pick up the platform. How else can patients be made more comfortable?

Website: www.hopitalaffinite.com

HOW TO BROADCAST YOUR PLAN TO #UNPLUG

So, after making a series of loud social media announcements about his upcoming departure from the digital world, Thurston changed his profile photos to read "OFFLINE THROUGH JAN 7, 2013. EXPECT NO REPLIES." "In an era of high-definition, handheld, multiparty, and free wireless video chat, my best option was essentially a smoke signal," he writes.

Here are some other tips from Thurston about how to let people know you'll be unreachable:

Schedule your unplug time: "Figure out when you can take a real break. If you want a true digital detox, two weeks is far better than one," Thurston says. If you can't take two weeks away, try unplugging for the weekend or even once a week. Here are a few other options.

Tell your colleagues: "A month before you leave, make sure that your key coworkers know that you’ll be truly unavailable. This gives you time to work out any real problems your absence may create."

Tell everyone else: "A week before d-day, send an email to a list of those who communicate with you on anything more than an occasional basis, alerting them to your departure. Make it clear to them that this is serious—no one will believe you’re really capable of ditching the digital life."

Set your away message for email: "Your note should be courteous but firm: You will return no emails (though you may choose to leave emergency contact info)."Warn everyone--AGAIN: "The morning of d-day, send an email to that list again. Make it emphatic: Mine began, 'I Have Left the Internet.' If they don’t understand that you’re for real now, they can’t be helped. They have, after all, been warned."

Manage social networks: "You can’t really turn off Facebook, Google+, Instagram, and so on. So use your home page to establish your absence. Take a photo of a stark message like: I Won’t Be Here Until [date of your return]. Use that as your profile photo."

Establish emergency exceptions: "There must be some way for people to reach you. Set up a clear system with someone you trust, who can have access to your email and social media."

Take a deep breath: "Vacate. Completely. It’ll be scary for a day or two. And then it will be great."

Some other recommendations from our readers on how to alert your friends that you're unplugging:

"I'm not dead, I'm just tired of tweeting."--@KarlPawlewicz

" 'My phone's dead. I don't have a charger.' I take an accidental afternoon-long hiatus and try to stay mentally present." --@ReginaFlanigan

"By faking your death."--@DavidAndGoliath

"Those who get it will give you your time, and those who don't get it will never notice."--Saurabh Chandrashekhar

clip collection services on the web

• Clipular bills itself as a "camera for the web" that lets you snap any portions of web pages and stitch the pieces together.
• Mammoth allows you to save notes, links, pictures and files, organize them into boards, and collaborate with others.
• Keeeb is a Clipboard-like service that allows you to save and organize content from around the web, with an emphasis on collaboration.
• Etceter is another service which you can use to to save videos, photos, links and documents and organize them using "Boxes" and "Pills".

Six Israeli Startups for Technology

Wix

Thirty-four million users have created an online presence through this freemium web publishing platform, which employs a drag-and-drop editor that Internet experts and novices alike can operate. Users are offered hundreds of designer-made templates and can boost their site’s functionality with Wix-developed and third-party applications.

Founded in Tel Aviv in 2006 by graduates of the Israeli military’s elite intelligence unit “8200,” Wix has offices in San Francisco and New York City and has raised $61 million from VC funds. It is reportedly planning to raise $75 million in an IPO on Wall Street.

“Everyone knows that a standalone, professional website is still the Internet Gold Standard,” says CEO and cofounder Avishai Abrahami. “With Wix, you don’t need lots of cash and technical knowledge to create an awesome site.”

Wibbitz

Wibbitz’s text-to-video platform uses advanced language processing to allow anything published online to be instantly turned into a video clip. Its publisher solution--which boasts a clientele of 50,000 websites and 17 million monthly viewers--will soon be available for iPhone.

Last year Wibbitz closed a $2.3 million round of funding headed by Horizon Ventures, the Hong Kong investment company which has previously put money into Facebook and Waze.

“The Internet is about enabling personalization, yet to this point content has largely come in a ‘one-size-fits-all’ text format,” says the startup’s CEO and cofounder, Zohar Dayan. “Wibbitz is about making content accessible through a rich new experience that makes more sense when getting information on-the-go and on a small screen.”

Powermat

Battery drainage is one of the biggest problems faced by consumers as they increase their reliance on smartphones. Enter Powermat, whose wireless power solutions help millions charge their devices between home, car, and office.

“After all,” says CEO Ron Poliakine, “if our devices are wireless then why should we still be tethered to an outlet for power?”

Powermat sells a wide range of retail products through a joint venture with Duracell and has placed its technology at 1,500 locations in the U.S. including Starbucks outlets, Madison Square Garden, and Jay-Z’s 40/40 nightclub. In May 2013 it acquired Finnish rival PowerKiss for an undisclosed sum, settling a conflict over wireless power standards in the process.

Bizzabo

This mobile networking platform uses LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social media to build interactive communities around business events. It enables organizers, sponsors, and exhibitors to network directly with guests and seek out new business opportunities.

Launched in July 2011, Bizzabo’s platform has been used in thousands of events worldwide, including Qualcomm Uplinq 2012, ad:tech London, and TEDx conferences. It is available on iOS and Android devices.

“Navigating an event of thousands and trying to locate the handful of people who are relevant to your business is a challenge,” says CMO and cofounder Alon Alroy. “Bizzabo is on a mission to maximize event experiences by becoming the standard mobile-social app for business events.”

Roomer

Roomer is an online marketplace that offers to connect the tens of millions of people who cancel their hotel reservations annually with travelers searching for a good deal. For example, if you have a $500 non-refundable hotel reservation in New York and can’t make it, you can recoup part of the cost by selling it on Roomer.

“It’s not only about getting the best value for your next cool hotel reservation, it’s about helping other travelers by doing so,” says cofounder Gon Ben-David.

The early-stage startup has launched in New York, Las Vegas, and San Francisco, and recently secured $2 million in funding from Israeli venture capital fund BRM.

Parko

Recent studies show that city drivers spend at least 20 minutes on average searching for a parking spot. Parko has developed a crowdsourcing solution for parking in a similar vein to Waze’s solution for traffic: It connects motorists looking for a spot with others about to leave one, while its algorithm identifies parking spots without users needing to remove their phones from their pockets.

Parko’s app has been downloaded by over 65,000 users since its pilot launch in Tel Aviv just over three months ago, “putting us on track in our mission to revolutionize the inefficient way that drivers find parking,” says CEO Tomer Neu-Ner.

The company is in talks with a number of potential partners including the city of Paris and private American firms.

Home servers offer inexpensive cloud storage to consumers

Space Monkey is another alternative to energy-consuming data centers that replaces standalone hard-drives with inexpensive home cloud storage devices.

 6th June 2013 in Homes & Housing, Telecom & Mobile.

We recently wrote about AOTERRA‘s decentralized server network that doubles as eco-friendly heating for homes. Now Space Monkey is another alternative to energy-consuming data centers that replaces standalone hard-drives with inexpensive home cloud storage devices.

To have access to digital data at home, consumers currently need to buy an external hard-drive – which they have to connect to their computer every time they require a file stored on it – or use a cloud service – whose prices are aimed at businesses and can often be as high as USD 800 a month for 1 terabyte of storage. One reason for these high prices is the cost of running a data center, where servers are packed next to each other and require intensive cooling to avoid overheating. Space Monkey’s alternative is a device around the same size a large external hard-drive, which sits in the home. Rather than placing their important files onto the device, it works as part of a network of cloud servers located in other residents’ homes. Users’ data is stored across the network and – instead of high monthly costs – the Space Monkey is available to buy USD 120, while cloud storage is a more affordable USD 10 a month. The video below explains more about the product:

Space Monkey raised triple its funding target on its recent Kickstarter campaign and previously won Best Overall Startup at the LAUNCH Festival in 2012. Are there other ways to innovatively decentralize cloud services in this way?

At Boston Children's Hospital, a prototype mobile app delivers medical info directly to patients

oston Children's Hospital has been pilot-testing an iPad app this spring called MyPassport. It's designed to give patients and their families more information about what's going on during their stay, from the doctors and nurses assigned to them to the results of their lab tests. It also lets them submit questions they have, and get them answered quickly by their docs.

Hiep Nguyen, right, a urologist at the hospital, led the development of the app, relying on software development resources from the Fasttrack Innovation in Technologyteam at Children's. When the hospital fielded surveys and conducted focus groups, Nguyen explains, some families of patients reported that they "felt disconnected from their providers," especially when English wasn't their first language. "In some cases, they didn't know who some of their doctors were." Among the goals for the app were to provide a "better awareness of tests being done, who their providers are, and what the discharge criteria are" — in other words, what needs to happen in order for them to be released. The app also "helps them organize questions they might have, and get answers before that day's rounds at 3 p.m.," Nguyen adds.

Test results show up not as abstract numbers, but along a spectrum of blue, green, or red. (Red being worrisome.)

The app interfaces with two different electronic medical records systems used at Children's, as well as the hospital's security database, which supplies photos of all of the docs and nurses. The app also includes pictures of the patient and his or her family, which can be helpful as a reference for harried docs trying to keep their patients straight, Nguyen says. The app replaces a binder full of paper that patients ordinarily receive, which is quite labor-intensive to assemble and maintain.

The initial version of the app was loaded onto a loaner iPad, and tested by about 30 patients. A version rolling out now can be used on a patient's own iPhone or Android device. That will enable patients to see their discharge instructions on the app, as well as information about future appointments.

Nguyen says the next steps for the project are to create foreign language versions of MyPassport — most likely in Spanish and Creole — since the families that report the lowest satisfaction with their experience at Children's tend to be non-English speakers, according to hospital surveys.

And MyPassport could also develop into a company funded by investors, Nguyen says. Though he doesn't have time to commercialize the product himself, "My greatest happiness would be to see this being used by many, many patients."

Start-up tries tapping market of uninsured dental patients

Dental services for adults are not part of the Affordable Care Act, which Brighter founder and chief executive Jake Winebaum believes could encourage more businesses to drop their existing dental-care coverage. That could help Brighter win customers, he says.

Brighter, which launches its new service on Monday in Los Angeles, connects its customers with dentists with whom it has negotiated discounted rates. The rates would be similar to the ones a dental insurance company might negotiate. Unlike with dental insurance plans, Brighter customers do not have to pay premiums or submit paperwork.

It is part of a group of start-ups seeking to shake up the health care business, many spurred along by the ACA. The group includes Practice Fusion, which digitizes medical records; ZocDoc, which automates doctor-appointment booking; and One Medical, which provides same-day doctor appointments for patients who pay a membership fee.

Like Brighter, many are taking on the task of making medical fees more transparent. Perhaps the best known is Castlight, which raised $100 million in a funding round last year from backers such as Morgan Stanley and T. Rowe Price.

Brighter has raised $13 million from backers including Benchmark Capital, which also backs One Medical, and Mayfield Fund, which also backs HealthTap, an online question & answer service for medical issues.

The funds should allow Brighter to expand into other California markets by the end of the year. An eventual goal of a national network may require further fundraising, Winebaum says.

Formerly chairman of the Walt Disney Internet Group, Winebaum also founded business-advertising network Business.com, which he sold to R.H. Donnelley Corp for $345 million in 2007.

About 148 million Americans currently lack dental insurance, about three times more than lack health insurance, Winebaum says.