VendScreen reinvents the vending machine using Android — and lands $12 million in funding

One of the biggest stories to come out of PIE Demo Day, yesterday, was VendScreen securing $12 million in Series A financing.

That’s a huge amount of money for a startup coming out of an incubator. And if you watch VendScreen’s pitch, you’ll understand why. Using the Android operating system to revolutionize a massive—yet technologically stagnant—market is a very big deal.

Erik Siemers at Portland Business Journal did an excellent job of capturing in the VendScreen story. So I’ll let him tell it.

Remarkable for a startup of any kind, Patel said he was looking to raise $400,000, only to find he had attracted $1 million. Then the company found itself oversubscribed at $1.5 million with investors saying they’d rather put in $500,000 than $50,000.

“It was just a funding train,” said Glenn Butler, VendScreen’s co-founder and chief technology officer.

For more on the story, read about VendScreen in the Portland Business Journal. For more on the company, visit VendScreen, follow @vendscreen on Twitter, or like VendScreen on Facebook.

[Editor’s note: Full disclosure: I work for PIE, the startup incubator in which VendScreen participated.]

Published by Rick Turoczy

More than mildly obsessed with the Portland startup community. Founder and editor at Silicon Florist. Cofounder and general manager at PIE. Follow me on Twitter: @turoczy View all posts by Rick Turoczy