Led · Series A · Apr 2019

Mighty Networks provides a platform for creators and brands to create and monetize communities through memberships, events and live online courses. Its flagship Business Plan targets new creators for digital subscriptions, while Mighty Pro offers branded iOS, iPad and Android apps for established brands. The company operates as a SaaS business and reported strong 2020 growth: ARR climbed 2.5x, annual customer growth rose 200%, and payments (subscriptions and course sales) grew 400% year over year. Mighty Networks counts more than 10,000 paying creators, including notable creators and organizations. The product added live events last year and the pandemic accelerated adoption as businesses moved offerings online. The company plans to use the new capital for product development across media types, expanded payment options and entry into new markets. Mighty Networks is a Palo Alto, Calif.-based SaaS platform that helps creators, niche entrepreneurs, and businesses build branded communities with content, online courses, groups, events, and subscription commerce. The product uses proprietary algorithms and smart technology to connect the most relevant people by location, interests, and topics. Anyone can create a Mighty Network for free and upgrade to paid tiers (Mighty Brand/Business or Mighty Pro) as they scale. The company offers features to add unlimited groups or online courses and to bypass custom development for brand-building. Mighty Networks was founded in 2011 and is led by founder & CEO Gina Bianchini. The company says it will use the new funding to expand operations and broaden its business reach. Mightybell, founded by Gina Bianchini (former Ning cofounder and CEO), offers a polished platform for authors to publish step-by-step guides called Experiences and for users to follow them incrementally. Experiences can include photos, text, tips, participant comments, and a grid of fellow travelers; the product emphasizes social sharing and progress prompts. The service is available as a website and an iOS app and includes analytics for both users and creators, such as funnel visualizations and supporter tracking. Mightybell supports monetization: creators can charge for premium Experiences, with Mightybell taking a 25% cut and handling payment processing. The company also charges a one-time $1 fee to create an Experience to deter spam and encourage higher-quality content. As of the article, Mightybell has nine employees and has recently completed seed funding to support the product.

Participated · Series A · Oct 2016

Vertical Mass is a data management platform (DMP) and marketplace built specifically for the music, entertainment, and sports industries. Its platform lets users collect and store data on fans across social media, websites, mobile apps, ecommerce and content streaming services, and to understand and reach them via automatic advertising or content wherever they browse the web. The company serves over 300 customers — including Grammy winners, Super Bowl half-time acts, actors, touring artists, Facebook pages and sports teams — whose combined audience exceeds 3.2 billion fans. Vertical Mass plans to use the Series A proceeds to grow engineering and data science teams, scale business development and sales, and to launch an enterprise marketing operating system tailored to its customer categories. It is led by CEO Mark Shedletsky and has offices in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco. The company secured $5M in Series A financing announced October 18, 2016.

Led · Seed · Jul 2016

LawnGuru operates an on-demand marketplace, connecting consumers with local lawn mowing and snow removal providers via web and mobile apps. The company plans to use its new funding to support national growth and to continue research and development of its technology. LawnGuru reports revenue growth of over 1,100% since 2015. It moved its headquarters to downtown Ann Arbor in April and will release an all-new Android version of its app this summer. To accommodate growth it is hiring for sales, customer service, and marketing roles. Founders Brandon Bertrang and Skye Durrant built a multi-million dollar lawn and landscape business prior to launching the platform after participating in a Mountain View accelerator and 500 Startups.

Participated · Seed · Feb 2016

Thumzap has built a payments platform designed to reduce friction for teens who lack payment options to shop online. Developers can embed a 'Just Ask' button at checkout so a child can notify a designated payer, who can approve and pay without revealing payment details to the recipient. The company charges a small cut from payments it processes as its revenue model. Thumzap aims to convert non-paying users into paying ones by making parental payments easy across participating apps. Its success depends on gaining traction with online sellers and app developers and achieving ubiquity of the 'Just Ask' option. The concept has raised concerns about potential abuse, including increased 'pester power.'

Participated · Series A · Jun 2015

IRIS.TV builds a video data platform that enables media companies to leverage machine learning and video data connectivity to build and monetize video businesses online. The platform provides video-level transparency by linking publishers' video data with third-party verification partners such as Oracle Data Cloud, Comscore, GumGum, ZEFR, Advanced Contextual, and Silverbullet. IRIS.TV offers API tools that enable video-level data targeting for Connected TV (CTV) and online video, emphasizing a privacy-first, neutral, and secure approach. The company intends to use its new funding to accelerate growth of its platform and expand its API tooling for CTV and online video targeting. IRIS.TV was founded in 2013 by CEO Field Garthwaite and COO Richie Hyden and is based in Los Angeles and New York City. IRIS.TV provides a cloud-based programmatic content delivery platform that enables publishers to personalize video programming at scale and in real time across all devices. The platform allows users to experience a TV-like linear stream that they can further personalize through a variety of interactive features. Its software is designed to increase consumption and simplify operations for web and mobile video distribution by matching content based on audience preferences and user interactions. IRIS.TV's clients include CBS, Tribune Publishing, The Hollywood Reporter and Billboard. The company is led by CEO Field Garthwaite and is Los Angeles, CA-based. IRIS.TV completed a $5.3M Series A funding round, representing its current reported capital raise. IRIS.TV provides publishers tools to make streaming video more personalized and keep viewers tuned in longer. Its core product uses a proprietary algorithm to extract and process video metadata and apply complex business rules, plus an adaptive stream management system that inserts and updates playlists based on user interactions. The technology is focused on stitching together short-form videos to create a lean-back experience and includes analytics on video performance, locality, and viewer demographics. The team shifted from a consumer product (Jukebox TV) to a B2B offering and includes executives with experience at ABC, Deluxe, Yahoo, Hulu, Disney, Universal, Rubicon Project, and Rand Corp. IRIS.TV has partnered with Brightcove, Kaltura, Unicorn Media, and Viddler and is gaining interest from major media companies, with planned integrations into a TV app and a mobile app soon. The company was founded officially in February and is based in Los Angeles. Financially, it has raised $1.7M in seed funding from angels in the media and finance worlds.