RatePoint gets $6.5 million to certify the Net

Several months ago, I had a chance to talk to Neal Creighton. He's the co-founder of GeoTrust, which provides secure transaction systems for e-commerce. He sold his company for about $125 million to VeriSign Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN) in September of last year.

Creighton didn't waste much time. His next venture is RatePoint, which appears to be getting some traction. Today, the company announced a $6.5 million Series A funding. The investors include Prism VentureWorks and .406 Ventures.

Basically, RatePoint is kind of like the Better Business Bureau for e-commerce merchants. That is, it handles customer feedback. It can not only help with customer service issues, but provide a better sense of the needs of customers (which is not always easy to determine in the online world).

It's an interesting idea -- although, it will likely take some time and more money to become a standard. Then again, RatePoint's team did a great job in getting lots of distribution with GeoTrust.

The business model? RatePoint charges an annual $49 fee.

To see other recent fundings, here's a list.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.