[qi:045] Meraki Networks, the startup that makes mesh networking gear and is building an ad-hoc San Francisco Wi-Fi network, says it has raised $20 million in a Series B round. While San Francisco's official Wi-Fi network is MIA, Meraki has been building out a distributed Wi-Fi network by providing residents with free, low-cost repeaters and funding the network out of its own pocket.
And initiative like that needs funding, as does Meraki's main goal of selling its Wi-Fi hardware. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company's backers in this latest round include Sequoia Capital, DAG Ventures, and Northgate Capital. Back in February of last year, Sequoia led a Series A round investment of $5 million, and Google and angel investors gave Meraki a seed round in November 2006.
Though we understand that the company needs to charge enough to make enough margin off its products, perhaps these funds can help Meraki, which has morphed from the open-source MIT Roofnet project into a well-funded startup, keep its lower price tag.
lo and behold people..we are launching a meraki city wide free wifi in apopka florida….over 100,000 pageveiws a week and growing with our fresh launch in apopka florida on march 28th..with two large sponsors and so far about 50 local businesses we have already grown to a few thousand users..in six months time we hope to have all of the surrounding areas broadcasting our community owned free wifi service.go to http://www.rsrwireless.com and become a sponsor now..ps meraki the name is associated with "free",everyone knows what free means…..
Who is going to be able to remember a name like "meraki".
whatever happened to the destined for failure OOma? I know its not the same, but I recall thinking….boy do they have this business model wrong.
I think you're talking about Fon, the spanish company that gave away a bunch of routers through GigaOm a while ago.
Sounds like they're going to WiFi the whole city of San Francisco with solar powered routers and 15,000 free repeaters.
Wasn't there another company that went toes up that did the same thing. Wanted you to buy a router, share the air, went out of business?