A Big Apple tech upstart is hoping cycling great Lance Armstrong still has some giddyap left in the tank.
The seven-time Tour de France winner has snapped up a stake in Mobli, a socialnetworking startup, and will use his fame and legendary drive to help the company gain traction in the competitive field of mobile apps, The Post has learned.
The precise amount of the investment could not be learned, but Mobli (www.mobli.com
) is expected to announce the deal as soon as today.
Armstrong is the second bold-faced name to purchase a stake in Mobli — and continues a growing trend among tech startups to try and copy a blueprint well executed by other tech companies, like Twitter, of using celebrity power to attract consumer traffic.
Moshiko Hogeg, the tech firm’s founder, became interested in hooking up with Armstrong because the sports star was among the first to gain 1 million Twitter followers, proving his social media power. Armstrong is expected to start posting content to the Mobli site as soon as today.
Last year, Leonardo DiCaprio bought a stake in Mobli, a social-networking firm that features photos and video on the go, as part of a $4 million round of fundraising. Hogeg said the DiCaprio investment could grow by tenfold after the next round of financing is complete later this quarter.
Hogeg has shunned major venture capital dollars at super-valuations in favor of smaller doses of cash from the celebrity world. He said there is interest from big Silicon Valley firms to invest — and that six such offers were entertained in the Armstrong round of investing.
“It doesn’t mean we won’t go with one VC in the end,” he said. “Right now we just can’t justify it, and so far we are getting along great with investors whose added value is not in the tech world.”
Hogeg would not disclose the amount that Armstrong invested but said it was minimal and not as much as DiCaprio’s contribution.
The fast money is a sign of the social-media situation Mobli finds itself in, a world in which Facebook is planning to turn public with about $5 billion in revenue but approaching $100 billion in value.
Mobli is pre-revenue, a term startups use while they focus on perfecting the product and growing usage but before they make any money.
The firm’s base is less than a million early adopters, while Facebook has more than 800 million.
Foursquare, perhaps New York City’s hottest socialmedia company, reached 10 million members in its first three years, enough to catapult it toward just under $1 billion valuation.
Mobli will lean on DiCaprio, as well, to develop content for the site, the type of content that Google covets for YouTube, which is spending about $100 million for celebrities to create their own channels along with other initiatives to spur original content creation.