I am very proud to pass on the news that Walid, Sokratis, Dima and Moty have, after many months of hard work, taken Trusted Places to the next level.

The team originally backed the site with their own money and took it through the first year using a small amount of seed funding and a lot of elbow grease. Today though they announced that they've received £500k backing from HOWZAT media. who are also behind WAYN and Zoomf.

The importance of Passion

I was fortunate enough to be able to work with the team during their very earliest days in a kitchen in Kilburn and have witnessed the site go from a set of whiteboard sketches through one incarnation and onto the site that it is today.

Trusted Places has grown because it provides a service in a single vertical (entertainment venue reviews) and does so with total passion.

Both Walid and Sokratis have put everything into the building of the site and the company and have sacrificed their jobs, their savings and every minute of time they have to make it happen. They are totally committed to creating a wonderful user experience and to both their visitors and advertisers.

The value of the vertical

The site has grown not just because it's a good site to use (and in the early days it certainly wasn't as good as it is now) but also because Walid and Sokratis followed up their online work with real offline parties and events.

The internet might create potential to scale to a hundred million users but when 95% of your input is generated by 5% of your users and the first 10k are the hardest to get, you'd better make damn sure that the 500 who drive you are looked after. Walid and Sokratis understood this well (and liked throwing parties) and have come out smiling as a result.

I know that they've run the gauntlet to get to where they are today and just how much the luxury of an office and developers who are in the country will mean to them all. They've a huge task ahead of them in growing the site to the point where it really pays but they've crossed the toughest first hurdle.

It seems they've found a great partner and I must say that it really couldn't have happened to a more deserving team. Well done guys.