When organizing a meetup with friends there are always an unending number of messages flying around filling up your smartphone and your time. Decisions need to be made of what day and time suits everyone, a venue or location that everyone is happy with, who is bringing what, etc. The list is endless and takes multiple messages back and forth before a solid plan is in place.

A company who is hoping to remove this frustration and make texting more convenient is Cola Inc. Coming out of stealth today, Cola is announcing their private beta of their product as well as a $1.3 million round of seed funding.

Real-time interactivity within the messaging thread

San Francisco-based Cola is launching Cola Bubbles, an app to help you eliminate a ton of messages and get everyone’s responses quickly and easily in one message thread.

Instead of back and forth messages to find a suitable time to meet, which restaurant to eat at, friends’ ETA etc., you can simply send a Cola Bubble and the person can select the option that suits them. Alternatively, send them meeting options in your calendar and they can simply select a time that suits them.

Add maps and create calendar options in Cola Bubbles, via Cola Inc.

Need to decide who is bringing what to the BBQ on Sunday? Simple include a to-do-list in the message thread where items can be claimed and marked complete when done.

Create list in Cola Bubbles, via Cola Inc.

Another feature includes the ability to see everyone’s location on a live map directly in your conversation.

Cola raises $1.3 million

Naval Ravikant leads the $1.3 million seed funding, together with participation from Tribeca Angels and Ravikant’s Angel List syndicate as well as other prominent investors, including AOL founder Steve Case and Brad Garlinghouse.

“I backed and believe strongly in Cola because of the stellar team they’ve assembled and the market opportunity they’ve identified,” said Mr. Ravikant. “This is a rare opportunity to change the way consumers interact with the core functionality of their phone while also providing developers with a platform where they can create brand new experiences.”

Cola CEO, David Temkin heads up the team. Temkin is the founder of Laszlo Systems and GM of AOL Mobile and Mail. The rest of the founding team include Marc Canter, founder of Macromedia and a prominent tech influencer; Mike McEvoy, leader of Adobe’s Imaging and Video team, including Photoshop; Jeremy Wyld, a key member of Apple’s original iPhone engineering team; and Brian Maggi, founder of Postini and technology manager for the original iMac.

A limited beta version of Cola launching on iOS and, if you are interested in testing the app, you can sign up for the beta on Cola’s website. Developers will also have the opportunity to create their own Cola Bubbles. Interested developers can also sign up for the developer community on Cola’s site.

Main image credit: PublicDomainPictures via Pixabay