Zimride raises $1.2M to fill your car’s empty seats

Ride-sharing startup Zimride has raised a $1.2 million seed round of funding.

Zimride offers customizable tools to companies and universities that want to encourage carpooling. Users looking for or offering rides create profiles with information like favorite music, ride frequency, and location (you can hide your exact address), then search for matches within their organization. The service also integrates with Facebook.

Even though the San Francisco company just raised seed funding, it was actually founded back in 2007, and said it now has more than 50 customers, including Stanford, USC, Harvard, and Esurance. USC, for example, said it has seen an increase in carpool permit sales and air quality scores since joining the service.

The funding comes from well-known investors, including Floodgate (the firm founded by Twitter- and Digg- investor Mike Maples Jr.), K9 Ventures, early PayPal employee Keith Rabois, and other angels.

The news was first reported by TechCrunch. Zimride cofounder and chief executive Logan Green confirmed the details via email.

Zimride said it will use the new financing to improve user experience, build mobile applications, and add support for other forms of transportation.

Floodgate partner Ann Miura-Ko is joining Zimride’s board of directors, and K9’s Manu Kumar has also joined as an observer. The first board meeting sounds like it was awesome — Kumar reports that he was iced by the company’s cofounders. (Yes, really.)

Here’s a “mini-documentary” video about the company.

http://www.veeple.com/swf/VeeplePlayer.swf?siteId=BrFxYpvi%252FnE%253D&videoId=dcc589c6-d866-4974-98c1-3424ef510c74&userId=&baseUrl=http://www.veeple.com/&showSpots=1&showViewBar=1&showTabBar=1&autoPlay=0&allowAddComments=0&allowShare=1&allowEmbedding=1&allowFullscreen=1&allowRating=0&stopPlayingOnInteractiveClick=1&displayRelatedVideos=0&playerMode=player&playerWidth=450&playerHeight=285&isFlex=0&recordEvents=1&scaleMode=maintainAspectRatio&spotScaleMode=noScale&deploymentURL=http://www.venturebeat.com