---
title: 'VendScreen reinvents the vending machine using Android — and lands $12 million in funding'
date: '2012-01-18T14:35:00-08:00'
type: post
word_count: 279
char_count: 1961
tokens: 363
categories:
  - '#featured'
  - Funding
  - News
  - Oregon
  - Portland
  - Startups
tags:
  - Android
  - Funding
  - PIE
  - vendscreen
---

# 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](http://livestream.com/piepdx "PIE Demo Day"), yesterday, was [VendScreen](http://vendscreen.com "VendScreen") securing [$12 million in Series A financing](http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2012/01/17/portland-startup-vendscreen-raises-12m.html "Portland startup VendScreen raises $12M").

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](https://twitter.com/#!/eriksiemers "Erik Siemers") at Portland Business Journal did [an excellent job of capturing in the VendScreen story](http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/morning_call/2012/01/the-story-behind-vendscreen-and-other.html "The story behind VendScreen's $12M and other notes from PIE"). 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](http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/morning_call/2012/01/the-story-behind-vendscreen-and-other.html "The story behind VendScreen's $12M and other notes from PIE"). For more on the company, visit [VendScreen](http://vendscreen.com "VendScreen"), follow @vendscreen on Twitter, or like [VendScreen on Facebook](http://facebook.com/vendscreen "VendScreen on Facebook").

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