Runfaces is a video social network that launched in October 2011, letting users sign in via Facebook or email, pick interests, and meet people through recommended video messages, live video chat, search, groups and a random-chat feature. The product includes a Pulse stream for publicly shared video messages and embedded YouTube/Vimeo content, plus tools for recording and sharing video messages. The founders, Alex Krizhevich and Anton Melnyk, used proceeds from their own businesses to bootstrap the product and built a six-person team. Runfaces went viral early—reaching 280,000 unique visitors in its first month, 10,000 registrations within days, over 7 million recorded video messages and more than 1 million minutes of video chat in specific U.S. states, which caused the site to crash. The team joined Ukrainian accelerator Eastlabs (backed by Victor Pinchuk), rebuilt the site on a new platform, and closed a $70,000 seed from EastOne Group. Runfaces plans to monetize via virtual goods and freemium features (invisible status, personalized video player branding) and later advertising and sponsorship; the company is currently fundraising and reports total investment of $140K including founders' capital.

Total raised

$0M

Funding rounds

1

Latest round

Seed

Latest activity

Apr 2012