NEW YORK -- Rave Wireless announced today it has closed $12 million in Series B funding. This latest round of financing was led by RRE Ventures, which joined existing investors Bain Capital Ventures and Sigma Ventures. RRE General Partner and Founder Stuart Ellman will join Rave Wireless’s board of directors. In addition, the company announced Professor Bill Sahlman of the Harvard Business School will join as an advisor.

Rave Wireless’s unique business model of directly serving communities such as colleges and universities with GPS-enhanced mobile safety, social networking, academic and local commerce applications has resulted in partnerships with both leading universities and the nation’s largest wireless carriers. Market demand for Rave Wireless’s mobile applications, such as the recently launched Rave Guardian that provides students with a location-based personal alarm device, has been extremely strong. The new round of financing allows the company to accelerate its growth in line with market demand.

“With all the talk in the press about today’s mobile youth, social networking and Web 2.0, I’ve seen two limitations: no one has figured out a meaningful way to make money from these trends beyond advertising and no one has figured out how to take advantage of the enabling technologies and underlying user behaviors to solve real world problems such as improving safety or moving community from the virtual to the real world. Rave Wireless has done both, with paying customers and applications that people actually use when they’re not behind a desk,” said Rodger Desai, Rave Wireless’s CEO.

Rave Wireless Inc.