• ZEFR

  Participated · Equity · Feb 2014

  ZEFR builds technology to help monetize digital content. The company reported a new $5 million funding event in March 2016 described in a regulatory filing. The financing appears to be convertible debt and reportedly came from 10 investors. ZEFR has not yet announced further details of the raise. The company is led by Richard Raddon and Zach James. Prior investors include Institutional Venture Partners, U.S. Venture Partners, Shasta Ventures, First Round Capital and Richmond Park Partners. ZEFR offers BrandID, a SaaS platform that helps brands and content owners connect fans and franchises, manage and monetize fans on YouTube, and understand audience behavior. The solution supports partners in monetizing IP, creating awareness and building audiences on YouTube. ZEFR's client roster includes adidas, Warner Bros., Sony Music, Real Madrid, Universal Pictures, Saturday Night Live and Hasbro Studios. The company is led by co-founder Zach James and is based in Venice, California. ZEFR raised $30M in financing to support its growth. The company intends to use the funds for software development and to expand its sales and marketing teams. Zefr, formerly Movieclips, operates a popular YouTube channel and content network where users browse, search, upload and share film scenes and trailers. The company’s technology identifies and claims content, tags it, and matches clips to studios so revenue and audience data flow to rights holders. Zefr has partnerships with major studios including MGM, Paramount, Sony, Universal, Miramax, and Warner Brothers. Its tagging capability creates targeted advertising opportunities that monetize video content while directing payouts to the studios. The channel draws more than 600 million monthly views and has received over 3 billion total views. The company is rebranding to Zefr and plans to expand content categories into television, music, and sports using the recent funding.

• Red Tricycle

  Participated · Series A · Nov 2012

  Red Tricycle offers curated local parenting content and helps busy urban parents plan weekends with timely, relevant local news and recommendations. It delivers content via email, website, social media, RSS and, soon, mobile. Founded in 2006 by Jacqui Boland, the company currently operates in six major markets: NY, LA, SF, SEA, PDX and SD. Red Tricycle runs an ad-supported revenue model with national advertisers including Amazon, Microsoft, Old Navy, Paramount, Disney, Starbucks, REI, IKEA, Whole Foods and ClifBar, as well as over 250 local advertisers. The company intends to use new capital to grow geographically, broaden its product offering and expand its community.

• MOVIECLIPS

  Participated · Series C · Aug 2012

  Movieclips, founded in 2009 and based in Los Angeles, built a platform to make memorable film moments available to fans and help studio partners monetize them. It has licensed content from six major Hollywood studios and created more than 25,000 clips for distribution on its site and YouTube channel. The company reports more than 600 million monthly views and over 3 billion total views since founding. Its technology is organized into Genome (clipping and uploading) and ID (identifying uploaded clips) divisions, and it averages about 13 hours to find a piece of content on YouTube. The company employs about 100 people and is rebranding as Zefr to expand beyond movies into TV, music, and sports. Planned uses of recent funding include accelerating those verticals, expanding internationally, and investing in new technology. MovieClips operates a clip engine launched in 2009 that hosts over 14,000 clips from roughly 1,400 titles licensed from studios including 20th Century Fox, MGM, Paramount, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures. The site offers a specialized video player and an API that third parties can integrate; AOL’s Moviefone uses MovieClips’ technology. MovieClips also launched MovieClips Mashups, a product demoed at TechCrunch Disrupt that lets users create two-minute montages. The company has developed proprietary metadata technology that assigns up to 1,000 data points to every scene to enable searching by actor, dialogue, mood, director, genre and more. Financially, MovieClips has been raising external capital and previously raised $3 million before the current round. The startup confirmed recent additional funding via an SEC filing. Movieclips operates Movieclips.com, a catalog of short movie scenes that launched in beta the prior December. Its clip engine contains over 14,000 clips from 1,400 titles licensed from major studios including 20th Century Fox, MGM, Paramount, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures. The company has proprietary technology that assigns up to 1,000 data points to every scene, enabling search by actor, film title, dialogue snippet, mood, director, genre and other attributes. Movieclips offers a specialized video player, an API used by AOL’s Moviefone, and launched Movieclips Mashups to let anyone create two‑minute montages. A "related clips" feature recommends similar clips and has increased page views by over 200%. The company plans to focus on content curation, more topical lists, and eventually expand beyond well-known titles into the long tail. Movieclips faces competition from AnyClip and will use its new funding for further product development.

• YogiPlay

  Led · Seed · Aug 2012

  YogiPlay builds a teacher- and researcher-informed app discovery and rating system for children’s learning apps, focused on ages 2–8. Its core product is YogiMeter, a rubric that assesses apps on engagement and educational quality. The company offers an SDK that developers can integrate to enable parental communication and tracking within apps. YogiPlay’s team includes founders Cedric and Michal Selling and Dr. Jim Gray (formerly Director of Learning at LeapFrog), who led development of YogiMeter. The product is surfacing YogiMeter rankings in a parent-facing discovery center, personalized dashboard, and standalone mobile apps, which are undergoing redesigns. Operational metrics include over 600 apps rated, fewer than 20 developers using the SDK, and about 45,000 parents registered on the site; the Android app is live while iOS approval remains pending.

• Open Air Publishing

  Participated · Seed · Jul 2012

  Open Air Publishing builds how-to books designed specifically for tablets and mobile devices, incorporating slideshows, video, and other tappable multimedia. The company operates as a hybrid publisher-studio: it picks topics, recruits expert authors, and handles development on its own team and tech, building titles on the Inkling Habitat platform. Since founding in 2011, Open Air has published four titles (including Speakeasy Cocktails and Holiday Recipes & Party Planning Guide) that have reached #1 or #2 in their categories and placed in the US top 100. Its books are normally priced between $4.99 and $9.99. Until now the titles were iPad-only; the company is releasing iPhone versions and plans future titles compatible with all iOS devices. Founder and CEO Jon Feldman says Open Air aims to have nine books out by the end of the year.

No current team members are available.