Innovation

Startup SMaSh Technologies has closed on a $1.35 million investment lead by businessman billionaire Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and a early graduate of Mt. Lebanon High School.

SMaSh’s flagship product is a mobile phone application that gives companies the ability to offer a rich array of products and transactional services to customers through text messaging. The firm was founded by two Carnegie Mellon grads, Chanu Damarla and Eric Boduch. SMaSh is based on Sydney Street and has an office in San Francisco.

“I am excited to back SMaSh as a Pittsburgh-based startup; it’s a region with many advantages and I’m excited to help grow the company there,” Cuban noted in the company’s press release. Boduch says that the founders met Cuban through industry chatter and email.

Many companies are building text and mobile marketing applications, says Boduch. “We see ourselves as providing the infrastructure to those companies to build more sophisticated text messaging applications.”

The application enables users to not simply look up a movie time or a restaurant phone number, but to buy tickets and make reservations as well.
The funds will help SMaSh to grow and roll out even larger applications with larger companies, says Boduch. SMaSh launched their first product last year and has about 20 clients.

The round included support from Innovation Works and Dr. Ihor Lys, named 2008 National Inventor of the Year by the Intellectual Property Owners Education Foundation.

For the last Pop City story on SMaSh, click here.

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Writer: Debra Diamond Smit
Source: Eric Boduch, SMaSh

Image courtesy SMaSH Technologies