Poggled, a new deals site focused on nighttime drink and party packages, has raised $5.6 million in venture capital funding, according to a regulatory filing. Not surprisingly, its investors are the same folks who helped get Groupon started two years ago.
The Chicago-based company was originally seeded by Lightbank, the incubator run by Groupon co-founders Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell. The new round was led by New Enterprise Associates, which previously led Groupon's $4.8 million Series A round in January 2008 (that company has since added more than $1 billion).
In many ways, Poggled is just like Groupon (albeit within a narrow vertical). Each day, Poggled:
One difference, however, is that Poggled takes particular advantage of the social nature of drinking. It asks users to let friends know about the deals -- via Facebook, Twitter, etc. -- which means that someday it could offer deeper discounts for group purchases. Such connections also help Poggled get a better sense of what individual users want (types of deals, favored locations, etc.).
It also allows users to search for deals by a variety of characteristics, including neighborhood, event type and day of the week. So far it only is serving the Chicago market -- something it might want to rectify soon, so that someone else doesn't create a quick clone in LA, New York or San Francisco (or a college-laden city like Boston).
I've put in calls to both Lightbank and NEA (Tom Grossi led the deal), and will update this post if they respond.
Update: Spoke with Brad Keywell. Some highlights: