Wander Wins $1.2M From Rob Go, SV Angel, Google Ventures, SoftTech And Others

The NYC-based Wander is today announcing a raise of $1.2 million from Rob Go’s NextView Ventures, Jeff Clavier and Stephanie Pameri’s SoftTech VC, SV Angel, Rich Miner’s Google Ventures, Collaborative Fund, Red Swan and TechStars.

Wander, which co-founder Jeremy Fisher describes as a “a way to the see the world through other people eyes” is still under wraps but Fisher reveals that the final product will be “adjacent” to both the curation and location space, a combination of Tumblr and Pinterest, Yelp, Tripadvisor and Foursquare.

The five person Wander team, which boasts one of if not the best startup swag shirts I have ever seen, works out of the TechStars office in Soho while its in “mystery mode.” The startup generated some buzz early on with this utterly pointless leaderboard,” a meta-joke which has brought in over 43K signups thus far.

“We expect to launch in the next couple of months, but want to release an intermediate experience in the next couple of weeks,” Fisher tells me. The startup just launched a very designy blog, commissioning over 50 illustrators to design graphic cards based on their initial impressions of the product. Those interested can download the each illustrations as wallpaper for their iPhone, iPad and (eventually) desktop wallpaper. You can also pin the designs to Pinterest, of course.

Fisher and co-founder Keenan Cummings plan on using the new financing for hiring, and are hoping to build a world class team that can scale the product along with their users when they launch in a couple of months.

“People have a ton of passion around the places that have made an impact on their lives, have desire to explore places they aspire to see, and get inspired by the places others are passionate about,” TechStars founder David Tisch explained, regarding he invested, “Wander captures this passion with an amazingly beautiful product. I am excited for what’s to come.”