Localmind was the second company we funded at Year One Labs. Localmind leverages check-in services like Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places to make powerful, real-time location-based Q&A the best way of discovering a city. When you have a question you want answered about a specific place (often in real-time), Localmind is the right service to use. And they’re collecting lots of great information from past questions & answers to help people figure out what’s going on around them.

Year One Labs announced the funding on November 18th, 2010 (link) when there wasn’t even a company name, and Lenny Rachitsky’s co-founder hadn’t joined (Beau Haugh came on later and he’s rocking!) It was very early. And now a short 8 months later, Localmind has a strong team, great traction, a strong vision and path towards the future, and capital to execute.

Today, Localmind announced a seed round of $600,000 led by Granite Ventures (based in San Francisco). There’s a great group of venture and angel investors as well, including: iNovia Capital, Real Ventures, Ian Sobieski, Ty Danco, Peter Bordes, Zack Aarons and Ash Jhaveri. It’s a mixture of VCs and angels from Montreal and across the U.S.

I’ll be joining Localmind’s Board of Directors.

It’s been great working with Localmind from Day One, and it’s exciting to see the progress. As I’ve written before – raising capital does not equal success – it provides the fuel to accelerate value creation and point yourself in a positive direction. Localmind’s doing that now and they’ll be announcing a whole bunch of new things in the near future.

In the short term, here’s what’s going on:

• The founding team (Lenny and Beau) are moving to San Francisco. If you want to connect with them there, I’m happy to make an introduction.
• Localmind is hiring! They’re looking for an Android Developer, UI / Interaction Designer and Director of Community Development. If you or someone you know fits the bill, get in touch with them.
• They just released Version 1.4 of the iPhone App. You can download it here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/localmind/id422776889
• They’ve got a new beta version of their Android App. If you want access, email android@localmind.com.

Here’s Localmind’s official announcement: http://blog.localmind.com/post/7574018517/localmind-closes-funding-and-is-moving-to-sf

Stay tuned for more news and updates about Localmind, and undoubtedly a host of lessons learned as the company moves to the next phase of its existence.