StearClear Gets $600K Funding from Angel Investor

StearClear, the developer of a GPS-enabled designated driver service for smartphones that gets its customers and their cars home safely, announced $600,000 in funding from a New Jersey angel investment group.

The latest round of financing, lead by Jumpstart, is part of more than $1,100,000 raised by the company since the beginning of 2012, according to a release.

Jumpstart will seat Thomas Chisholm and Neil Rosoff, described by company officials as "veteran angels," on the StearClear board of directors.

Craig Sher, Ken Schwartz, Andrew Bares and Harjinder Sidhu founded the StearClear in November 2011, in an effort to combine the latest smartphone and GPS technologies with a desire to create a scalable business that curbs 12,000 DUI-related deaths and 900,000 DUI and DWI arrests that occur each year in the U.S.

“StearClear's business model is a great example of the convergence of technology, process and ingenuity that is bringing innovation and profitability to industries that have relied on mostly manual, inefficient systems,” said Jumpstart Chairman Mario Casabona, in a release. “StearClear is the first franchise system that gives entrepreneurs an opportunity to cash in on hyper-local services that have been enabled by smartphone technology.”

Jumpstart is a private, member-lead, angel group that invests in early-stage technology companies in the Mid-Atlantic region. Jumpstart is a leading angel group in New Jersey and its members include many successful entrepreneurs, business executives and venture capitalists in the region. Over the past three years, Jumpstart has invested more than $19 million primarily in early-stage companies with significant intellectual property. 

“We saw an opportunity to create a business that could serve our local communities by giving impaired customers a safe alternative to get themselves and their cars home safely as well as utilizing technology to scale the service nationally and internationally through franchises,” said Craig Sher, CEO and founder of StearClear. “We have developed an efficient way to deliver these critical services nationwide and a business model that allows them to be managed by local operators who have a vested interest in their communities.”

Check out this Wyckoff-Franklin Lakes Patch story for more info on StearClear or check out their website at www.stearclear.com.