ThinkNear founder Eli Portnoy. (Photo: LinkedIn)

Cha-ching! GigaOm reports that TechStars New York just got its first acquisition: 2011 graduate ThinkNear, a hyperlocal mobile ad startup, was acquired by GPS purveyor Telenav for $22.5 million. The startup will be incorporated into a newly launched mobile ad platform called Scout Advertising. It's the largest TechStars acquisition thus far.

Not too shabby. 

ThinkNear started out peddling a yield management tool, with the idea that businesses would run ads to attract customers when sales were slow, and quickly picked up a $1.6 million round with IA and Google Ventures. But when that turned out to be an uphill battle, the startup shifted to a broader hyperlocal model, and now here we are.

Here's what the acquisition will allow:

Now, advertisers will be able to use ThinkNear’s location targeting to reach consumers within 100 meters of any location. But the ads will tap Telenav’s Drive-To Advertising platform to provide browser-based GPS turn-by-turn directions to lead the person to the place that’s being advertised. That’s important for advertisers who want to measure their advertising ROI because they can see if someone arrives at a place after seeing an ad.

Advertisers who want any more guarantees than that will have to hire someone with a cattle prod to harass sidewalk passersby.

UPDATE 7/26/2011

ThinkNear has announced that Google Ventures, who the team met during their time at TechStars NY, is one of its backers. Other investors include Metamorphic Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, FF Venture Capital, Real Ventures, Zelkova Ventures, BoldStart VC, David Tisch, Bill Boebel, Ben Sun, David Cohen and Matt Turck.

"We had only planned to raise $1 million but got $2 million worth of interest before we stopped looking," says Founder Eli Portnoy. "We chose mainly to raise from the mentors we met through TechStars, people we knew could add value."

The company won't disclose how many clients it has yet, because it sees its "smart marketing engine" in competition for the same slice of the budget at restaurants and small businesses who might try out heavyweight services like Groupon and Living Social.

and now back your the original post...

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There isn't a lot of buzz around the field of "yield management" these days. But while ThinkNear's seems to have settled on a boring tagline for their business, it actually sits at the middle of some of the most interesting trends in the much hyped mobile space right now.

Betabeat has learned that ThinkNear just closed their funding round, raising $1.63 million instead of the $1 million they announced at TechStars NY Demo Day back in April. The round, led by Roger Ehrenberg's IA venture's, includes a number of interesting investors.

"Its Sunday night, my kids are sleeping and I am back in the office listening to John type as he whips out some groundbreaking code," Founder Eli Portnoy wrote on his blog this week. The company recently had a bad experience with a contractor that left them with shoddy work which delayed their progress. But Portnoy's blog is filled with excitement about the company and burning the candle at both ends.

IA is all about big data. ThinkNear helps merchants by pulling together information from public check ins, weather, local events and more to help merchants maximize the flow of customers through their store. Portnoy and his co-founder John Hinnegan, earned their chops at Amazon, where they first conceived the idea for ThinkNear.

ThinkNear weighs all these different factors and delivers mobile ads and deals to nearby customers during times when business is slow. It's the kind of ad inventory that is going to be growing very rapidly over the next year, as services like Google Offers and Groupon Now compete to win the loyalty of smartphone users. ThinkNear wants to build an ad network for serving these sort of real time proximity based ads/deals.

DO NOT GO TO THERE!

Venture capitalist Peter Thiel pushed the debate about whether a college education is worth the student debt past the tipping point--he'd rather pay smart kids $100,000-a-piece to build a start-up--but the argument has taken on a life of its own.

Entrepreneurs have long romanticized the notion of a boot-strapped, self-taught success and held a healthy skepticism over whether a classroom can prepare you for the business world. But Eli Portnoy, a TechStars alum/Harvard MBA and CEO of ThinkNear, a location-based services start-up that helps merchants drive traffic to stores during down periods, takes an updated look at the current landscape.

It's no longer just a choice between going to college or venturing out on your own. With the proliferation of incubators and accelerators, especially top programs offering a credible alternative, Mr. Portnoy delves into the specifics, outlining the upsides of going to TechStars versus getting a Harvard MBA. His conclusion?

If you know you want to start a company there is nothing more helpful than TechStars and I would strongly suggest going through the program ahead of an MBA. The experience is more relevant, the network more concentrated, and the cost (hard cash and in opportunity) lower. In the long-run I am not sure which will prove more helpful (though I suspect the brand cache of an MBA program will be longer lasting), but the direct benefits of being in an incubator/accelerator are unmatched and the opportunity unparalleled if you are thinking of starting a tech based business.

Sounds good in theory. Too bad TechStars is now harder to get into than the Ivy League.