Participated · Series A · Oct 2023

TieUps operates lit.link, a free branding‑profile tool that aggregates links, media, NFTs and storefronts into a single editable page with rich design templates and no app required. The company also runs WeClip, a no‑code, experience‑based fan‑nurturing platform and community‑focused SNS that follows communities (not individual users) and uses three permission tiers to manage members. lit.link has surpassed 2 million users since launch (about 2.5 years), with roughly 60% of users in Gen Z (ages 11–25). TieUps plans to use recent funding to launch lit.link’s global business, expand WeClip’s functionality, and strengthen hiring. The company has stated a new corporate mission to “evolve communication and create valuable connections” and has renewed its corporate website to communicate that mission. Founded in April 2020 and based in Shibuya, Tokyo, TieUps positions itself as infrastructure for creator‑economy and community‑driven communication. TieUps operates lit.link, a free visual profile site, and WeClip, a community-first SNS focused on psychological safety and quality information flow. lit.link launched in January 2021 and now has about 700,000 users and over 45 million monthly page views, making it one of Japan’s largest profile sites. WeClip launched its beta in October 2021 and hosts more than 1,000 communities; an iOS app and business features were planned for release in 2022. The company frames its offering as Fan Relationship Management (FRM), aiming to convert single page views into long-term, enthusiastic fans. TieUps was founded on April 30, 2020 in Shibuya, Tokyo, and emphasizes feature development, hiring, and strengthening internal operations as strategic priorities. The recent seed financing will be directed toward product feature expansion, recruitment, and organizational growth.

Participated · Series E · Nov 2019

SmartNews operates the SmartNews news app in Japan and the United States, using algorithms and a mobile-optimized interface to surface quality information. The company was founded on June 15, 2012 and frames its mission as delivering high-quality information to those who need it. SmartNews is investing in product evolution and user experience improvements across Japan and the U.S., including launching a paid subscription service, SmartNews+, in December 2023. Recent corporate moves to support growth include hiring Cory Ondrejka (former Google VP of Product Management) as CTO in October 2023 and announcing a business partnership with NTT Docomo in November 2023. The company plans to use new funding to strengthen its U.S. operations, expand its advertising business, and make business growth investments to enhance product features and user experience. SmartNews operates a news aggregation app and website that uses machine learning to personalize article selection and a “News From All Sides” feature to surface diverse political perspectives. Its product suite includes SmartView (a quick-reading, offline-capable format), a COVID-19 vaccine dashboard, a U.S. election dashboard, and recent trackers for hurricanes, wildfires, and crime/safety. The company monetizes primarily through advertising—selling inline and video ads and sharing revenue with publishers—and reports relationships with more than 3,000 global publishing partners; over 75% of partners use SmartView and more than 70% of pageviews originate from SmartView. The app has about 85 million lifetime downloads (14 million in the past year), with Japan accounting for 59% of installs; the company said U.S. monthly active users doubled over the last year but declined to share current MAUs. Founded in 2012 and launched in the U.S. in 2014, SmartNews has grown its headcount to roughly 500 people globally and plans to expand further in the U.S., aiming to double its U.S. staff. The company says new funds will be used to develop more U.S.-focused consumer health and safety features and to expand its team. SmartNews is a global news discovery company that leverages machine learning and relationships with over 400 U.S. publisher partners to deliver quality information. The company is led by co-founder and CEO Ken Suzuki and maintains offices and employees in Tokyo, San Francisco, Palo Alto, Shanghai, and New York. In September 2019 SmartNews released its “News From All Sides” political slider, and in October 2019 it launched SmartView First, a licensing program that includes more than 30 major content providers such as BBC, Business Insider, Bloomberg, BuzzFeed, and Reuters. SmartNews completed a $92M Series E financing, bringing total funding to $182M and valuing the company at $1.2B. The round will fund expansion of global engineering teams across mobile, backend, and machine learning and support accelerated growth in the U.S. and worldwide. SmartNews is a Japan-founded news-aggregation app that curates articles from roughly 1,500 publications and surfaces stories based on users' reading activity via machine-learning algorithms. The app has approached 20 million downloads and counts about 10 million users in Japan, which remains its largest market. In Japan SmartNews monetizes through inline advertising, video ads, and deals with publishers around its 'SmartViews' fast-loading format; U.S. and other international markets are still advertising-free. The company intends to use new funding to grow its user base, expand revenues outside Japan, hire talent, and further develop its machine-learning news-combing technology. SmartNews differentiates itself with bottom-up algorithmic curation rather than human editorial selection and has become a prominent ad network for news publishers in Japan. SmartNews is a news recommendation and aggregation app built around machine-learning algorithms that surface articles based on clicks, pauses and reading patterns. The app has about 10 million downloads, roughly 1 million monthly active users (MAUs) in the U.S. and around 4 million MAUs in Japan, and is present in over 150 markets. SmartNews works with more than 150 publishers globally and has begun a small ad rollout in Japan; subscriptions and paywalls are planned for later. The company says ads will not launch in the U.S. until it grows its U.S. MAUs, and it is focused on building publisher monetization tools. The new funding will be used to expand its U.S. presence and staff up a San Francisco office, with hires targeted at machine-learning and data-science specialists.

Participated · Equity · Feb 2013

TubeMogul operates a branding-focused video marketing platform that enables programmatic, real-time buying of video ads for brand advertisers and digital ad agencies. The company notes video ads available for real-time buying in Asia are growing rapidly (20.2% per month) and launched a private beta in the region last year, running campaigns for regional and Fortune 500 brands and trading desks. TubeMogul has shifted its focus toward brand advertisers and their digital ad agencies and runs products and services around programmatic video inventory. It plans to use new capital to accelerate expansion in Asia, having opened offices in Beijing and Singapore and hired regional leaders to grow publisher and brand relationships. The company named Sven Rossbach to head the Beijing office and hired former BBC.com VP Phu Troung to lead Southeast Asia expansion. TubeMogul was founded seven years ago and shifted its strategic focus in 2011 to brand advertisers and digital ad agencies. TubeMogul provides a PlayTime platform for delivery of video ads that integrates real-time media buying, ad serving, targeting optimization and brand measurement. The company launched operations in Japan via a partnership that customizes its platform for the local market, combining DAC’s trading desk and technology with a translated site and access to new inventory. At launch, available ad formats include in-stream and in-display units, in-app video interstitials and mobile web formats to suit heavy smartphone and tablet use. TubeMogul raised ¥100m ($1.24M) in venture funding to support TubeMogul Japan, with proceeds intended to enable rapid scaling through hiring and signing deals with brand advertisers and trading desks. That ¥100m raise adds to a $20M round closed in December 2012, bringing recent funding to roughly $21.2M. TubeMogul operates PlayTime, a platform that integrates real-time media buying, ad serving, targeting, optimization and brand measurement to simplify delivery of video ads for brand marketers. The company partners only with premium and transparent inventory sources, including direct publishers and private networks, to deliver video to any audience, in any format, on any device. Advertisers pay only when someone chooses to watch their video and receive visibility into which sites their ads ran on, how ads performed, and who watched them. Beyond advertising, TubeMogul offers OneLoad for video distribution and video analytics to measure and compare the performance of owned, paid and earned video media. The company announced a $20 million Series C financing and continues to operate global offices. TubeMogul operates a video analytics service and a data-driven ad platform called PlayTime that launched in March and optimizes video ad buying on a viewer-by-viewer basis. The company monetizes primarily through PlayTime while offering its analytics broadly (made free in July) across video publishers. TubeMogul says it possesses the "world's largest proprietary database of video viewership" and combines that data with collaborative filtering to predict engagement and bid for impressions in real time. CEO Brett Wilson projected revenues this year would reach $10 million, up from $2.6 million in 2009, and reported a $1.1 million revenue month in September. The platform provides granular metrics to publishers and brand advertisers including views, viewers, geography, time watched, clickthroughs, and social sharing. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo is a board member and one of its angel investors. TubeMogul operates a video distribution platform and a suite of video analytics products, including its "Universal Upload" syndication service that distributes content across many social sites and video hubs. The company says it will use the new funding to grow its distribution platform and to streamline and expand its analytics offerings. TubeMogul acquired video metrics firm Illuminex last October to bolster its analytics capabilities. It reports an impressive client base of more than 75,000 publishers, including CBS Interactive, Condé Nast, Red Bull, Cisco, Home Depot, and the White House. Competitors named in the article include Visible Measures, Brightcove, and Maven Networks. Financially, the company has raised $5.2 million in total financing to date.