BOULDER - SimpleGeo Inc., a new company started by Matt Galligan and Joe Stump, has raised $1.5 million in funding.

The seed round was led by First Round Capital, which has offices in San Francisco and West Conshohocken, Penn., but other investors, including Boulder-based TechStars co-founder David Cohen, participated in the funding.

Boulder-based SimpleGeo, founded this summer, develops location-based infrastructure for mobile phone applications. Galligan said the company is targeting application developers.

The money, which Galligan suspects will last about 18 months, will primarily be used to hire more staff - namely software and systems engineers. The company currently has five full-time and two part-time employees.

Galligan, a Boulder entrepreneur, co-founded SocialThing!, which was acquired by AOL LLC. Stump was a lead architect at Digg Inc.

The two initially formed Crash Media Inc., doing business as Crash Corp., which was focused on reality gaming for smart phones.

The two planned on creating games like scavenger hunts and geocaching games where people would play using their cell phones. In a scavenger hunt, the user may have to go to a specific nearby location and upload a picture of a specific object.

But Galligan and Stump decided to change gears, and the company name, to pursue location-based technology.