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Photo by Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for Mobli 2.0
Actor Leonardo DiCaprio and CEO of Mobli 2.0 Moshiko Hogeg attend Mobli 2.0 Launch Party at Kenichi on March 10, 2012 in Austin, Texas.
Leo's Shot:
It's tough to be a Hollywood cool kid these days without your own tech investment (see Kutcher, Timberlake, et al.), so it's no surprise Leonardo DiCaprio has claimed a seat on the start-up bandwagon. The actor is an investor in mobile-photo platform Mobli, which labels people's snapshots and videos by subject or location. Members can follow other users or keep tabs on a specific tag, like "baseball" or "concerts." (Part of its appeal, say analysts, is following celebrity users like DiCaprio and actor David Arquette.) The company says DiCaprio, who declined to comment through his publicist, contributed substantially to a $4 million seed round of funding last fall.
How He Framed It:
Ever ask the owner of your favorite company for a sit-down? Well, you're not DiCaprio. Mobli founder Moshe Hogeg says DiCaprio saw fellow actor Lukas Haas using the app, liked it, and simply called Hogeg and asked to meet the team. He ended up joining Mobli's advisory board, and Hogeg says he soon started to suggest tweaks for the product. The company won't elaborate on DiCaprio's input, but says some of his ideas have been incorporated into the app.
Snap Your Own:
Investing in a start-up is always a risk, but experts say mobile tech is one of the better bets: Smartphone users now spend an average of 94 minutes on their apps per day, according to analytics firm Flurry. But not everyone can be the next Angry Birds. Amish Jani, a managing director for New York venture capital firm FirstMark Capital, says the strongest apps tend to have high user-retention rates and a strategy for making money, but he warns that there's no guaranteed formula for success.
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