Participated · Seed · Jan 2013

Reachli (formerly Pinerly) provides a visual content marketing and advertising platform that places relevant in-image ads and tracks image performance across Pinterest, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other visually-centered networks. The company offers self-serve advertising and publishing tools and a real-time bidding dashboard where campaigns can start as low as $10 and run up to $10,000. Reachli has assembled a network of over 2,000 publishers (about 500 website owners and 1,500 social influencers) and supports over 80,000 brands, agencies and content creators. Its proprietary relevancy and photo-matching algorithms power in-image ads that the company says can achieve click-through rates as high as 1–4%. Publishers receive a 50/50 revenue split; top influencers on Pinterest have earned $500–$5,000 on campaigns. Going forward Reachli plans to build more native advertising products and improve its ad editor and other tools.

Participated · Seed · Oct 2012

FundersClub operates a curated online marketplace that pools accredited investors into single-purpose vehicles to buy equity in startups, enabling minimum investments as low as $1,000 (average investment ~$2,500). The site performs due diligence and offers startups advisory support and connections, and so far has attracted about 3,400 registered investors, roughly 340 of whom have invested, contributing several million dollars across five startup rounds. FundersClub raised a pre-seed of $529,000 on its own platform and has demonstrated quick raises (one company hit a $100,000 target in 48 hours). The company plans to use new capital to cover significant legal costs, hire staff to expand due diligence, accelerate product development, and cultivate relationships with banks, hedge funds, and private equity. A longer-term roadmap item is offering structured liquidity to late-stage employees and investors by buying share packages and selling rights to crowd investors. FundersClub emphasizes that it never handles investor money directly, using separate custodial accounts for each fund, while acknowledging regulatory uncertainty around broker-dealer rules.

Participated · Seed · Jul 2012

Virool offers an Inline video ad unit that launches video ads within articles and other editorial content and has been served across more than 2,000 online properties. Its units are designed to be non-intrusive (muted by default, sound on hover or when explicitly engaged on mobile). Virool also develops eIQ technology that uses webcams to help advertisers gauge viewers’ emotional responses to videos. The company works with publishers including Mashable, Adweek and The Onion and positions its mission as making advertising more human by encouraging more engaging, shareable videos. Virool was incubated at Y Combinator and is led by CEO Alex Debelov. Future plans include more mobile ad units and geographic expansion, including efforts in Japan. Virool provides a self-serve platform that allows video producers, artists, studios, agencies and individual promoters to target audiences (country, age, gender, interests, platform) and buy pay-per-view distribution for YouTube-hosted videos. Its network reaches close to 22 million people across websites, blogs, Facebook games and mobile applications. Since launching the self-serve product, Virool grew from 200 to 30,000 registered advertisers and has promoted 20,442 videos to date; the site was signing up about 450 new advertisers per day and running roughly 80–90 campaigns daily. Campaign spend ranges from a $10 minimum to large brand campaigns (Intel ran a reported $300,000 campaign). The company was founded in late 2011 and participated in Y Combinator’s Summer 2012 batch. With the new funding Virool plans to staff up—particularly on sales—and scale the service worldwide. Virool is a San Francisco-based social video advertising startup launched in May 2012 by CEO Alex Debelov. The company’s platform allows videomakers to reach desired target audiences on Facebook, mobile phones and niche sites. Its services have been used by brands including Clorox, Colgate, Intel, Levis, Orbitz, Samsung, Sony and Volkswagen. The company raised $509,800 via the online venture capital platform FundersClub. Investors in the round include TMT Investments, Y Combinator, 500 Startups, Yuri Milner and others. Virool is a San Francisco-based online video advertising service offering a self-service platform for distributing long-form videos. Launched a few months earlier by CEO Alexander Debelov, the platform allows creators to distribute videos over 30 seconds to targeted audiences across a network of online publishers, blogs, social games and mobile apps. It also provides an application that enables publishers on Facebook, iOS, Android, blogs and other media channels to plug into the network and provide advertising space. The company reported it already has over 7,000 advertisers using the platform. Virool received US$400k from AIM-listed TMT Investments PLC. The company previously raised capital from Y Combinator (including Andreessen Horowitz, SV Angel, Yuri Milner and General Catalyst), Thomvest Ventures, 500Startups, NetPrice, Global Venture Alliance, Plug and Play Ventures, Ryan Tu, Paul Buccheit, Garry Tan, Harj Taggar and Alexis Ohanian. Virool operates a self-serve platform that lets YouTube video producers boost views by placing videos in Facebook and mobile apps. Publishers can integrate via an API and advertisers link YouTube videos, set keywords and geographic targets, and pay as little as $10 to promote content. The startup positions itself as an "AdWords" for longer-form video, targeting videos longer than a minute and charging only when viewers watch at least 45 seconds of a minute-long video. Virool reports more than 5,000 advertisers, is adding about 200 new advertisers daily, and serves over half a million video views per day. Revenues are doubling every month and the company is already profitable, with repeat advertisers and early brand customers including Sephora, Skittles, GM, and Clorox. To keep growing, Virool has raised $500,000 in seed funding.