Dopplr, one of the darlings of the early adopter crowd, announced an all-star roster of angel backers today.

A social network primarily aimed at business travellers, Dopplr informs its users when serendipity delivers themselves and their frequent-flier contacts to the same city.

Its newest shareholders are a suitably globe-trotting and glamorous group. They include Thomson-Reuters chief executive Tom Glocer; Tyler Brûlé, founder of style magazines Wallpaper* and Monocle, and an FT columnist; Esther Dyson, formerly of Cnet, who announced her intention to invest in Dopplr in a Wall Street Journal article some months ago; Joshua Schachter, whose geek-friendly bookmarking service, Del.icio.us, was bought by Yahoo; and Lars Hinrichs, founder and chief executive of Xing, the German business networking site.

Dopplr declined to say how much it’s raised, instead focusing on the value of having such prominent evangelists for its service.

Those that get Dopplr, love it – for its design, its attention to detail and its easy integration with other sites such as Facebook. Those that don’t – which apparently includes paidContent blogger Robert Andrews, who calls the service “weird” – remain to be convinced that Dopplr’s main function – telling people where you are going – has broad appeal as a standalone site.

Also participating in the round, as a private investor, was Saul Klein of Index Ventures. Mr Klein’s other contribution to the startup community is Seedcamp, a conference for tech entrepreneurs which today debated two topics germane to Dopplr’s position: whether a business is worth backing as a “feature” which is set up merely to be acquired, and whether to take funding from venture capitalists.

Kevin Cornils of Buy.at, who also sold his online marketing service to AOL, said a larger, more fully developed company gets a better valuation. “The only thing to hold against AOL’s offer were our standalone plans,” he said, such as raising more money or making an acquisition.

Bebo’s founder, Michael Birch, noted the preponderance of feature sites in Europe and Silicon Valley that are “built to flip” – often to Google at a rate he pegged at $600,000 per employee.

The Seedcamp panel, which included the founders of Plazes and Jaiku, was generally appreciative of VC funding. Martin Stiksel of Last.fm said: “If you spend your own money, you could strangle your own business by being too prudent and tight… Spending someone else’s money is easier than  spending your own.” (He meant this as a recommendation.)

Mr Birch was more blunt: “VCs can be your friends and they can be a pain in the arse. It depends how your relationship goes.”

For now, Dopplr still feels like a (really useful, elegantly executed) feature rather than a complete site. But perhaps having a diverse group of angel backers – instead of the pressures of a VC – will give it the space to find a sustainable source of revenue.