• Franklychat

  Participated · Equity · Oct 2014

  Frankly is a mobile app that enables ephemeral text messaging, with messages that self-destruct after 10 seconds and links that allow non‑users to view messages via a web page. The company has grown its user base to over 1.7 million, having doubled in the past six months, and currently ranks #256 in the Social Networking category on iTunes (U.S.). Frankly has a 20-person team and says it will use new funding to aggressively hire. With the additional capital, Frankly is launching a customizable social chat SDK for other apps and is already working on integrations with global brands. CEO Steve Chung expects to announce a major brand partner within 30 days and to book its first (small) revenues this year. Investors appear focused on selling Frankly’s technology via the SDK as much as consumer growth. Frankly is an ephemeral messaging app that lets users send short text messages that vanish after 10 seconds. Unlike Snapchat, Frankly focuses on text rather than photos or video. The app’s recent update adds controls to express emotion via text, including pinch-to-resize text and swipe-to-change background color. CEO Steve Chung says the team wanted to provide "a full set of tools to communicate with your emotions via text." The company has a team of about 20 and is funded with $6 million in backing from South Korea’s SK Planet.

• Tapas Media

  Led · Seed · Nov 2012

  Tapas Media operates a creator-driven digital comics platform with more than 32,000 creators who have produced over 48,000 titles and a reported 2.1 million monthly visitors. The platform emphasizes romance and fantasy stories drawn in a manga‑influenced style rather than mainstream superhero comics. Tapas monetizes content via micropayments — typically offering initial chapters for free and charging readers to continue. The company is actively developing its most popular creator IP for other media, pursuing adaptations for film, TV and games. It has announced a partnership with Red Kraken Apps to develop a mobile puzzle game based on its Dungeon Construction Co. comic, and has publishing and distribution partnerships with Hachette Book Group, Ten Speed Press, Tencent and Kakao. CEO Chang Kim has said the team aims to turn platform IP into larger entertainment franchises. Tapas Media runs Tapastic, a portal for serialized webcomics and visual stories inspired by the Korean webtoon phenomenon. Tapastic works with artists and writers to create and share original, bite-sized graphical stories optimized for web and mobile consumption. The company also provides an open platform for independent creators to publish and distribute their work. Tapastic currently features more than 50 serialized visual stories across action, comedy, drama, fantasy and lifestyle genres, with new episodes typically released on a weekly schedule. The service is available on the web and as a free Android app, and an iOS app was announced as coming soon. Tapas plans to introduce a revenue-sharing program for content contributors.

• Quixey

  Participated · Series B · Jun 2012

  Quixey builds mobile search technology that helps users find content within apps and jump directly to in‑app actions. It has developed capabilities to take users from search results to personalized actions, such as showing nearby friends in Facebook or bringing up a Spotify playlist. Founder Tomer Kagan said the technology enables users to find actions inside apps and go directly to the answer they want. The company raised an additional $30M in debt financing to accelerate its go‑to‑market strategy. Quixey has previously raised $173.8M in funding, most recently a $60M round last year, from investors including Alibaba Group, SoftBank, USVP, Atlantic Bridge and Goldman Sachs. The new debt was provided by existing investors, according to a company spokesperson, and was disclosed in a regulatory filing first reported by CNBC. Quixey develops mobile search technology that goes beyond app discovery to find content and core actions buried inside applications via deep linking. Its platform can surface in-app results—examples cited include returning Yelp reviews or Groupon deals when searching for local restaurants. The company powers 100 million queries monthly and counts partners and customers such as Ask.com, Sprint, Skyfire, DuckDuckGo, Microsoft, StarHub, Alibaba.com, and Nokia. Quixey has launched a sponsored ads product similar to Google AdWords as a revenue driver and runs a developer-focused AppURL initiative to promote deep-linking. Leadership says the company is focused on the U.S., India and China and expects new overseas investors to open additional opportunities and partnerships. To date the company has raised capital that supports its expansion and product initiatives. Quixey has built a search engine to tackle app discovery by letting users search for functionality and content inside mobile apps. It powers app search for partners including Sprint, Ask.com, browser makers and OEMs. The company is handling more than 100 million queries per month. Quixey is expanding beyond app discovery into app content discovery and has launched the developer-focused AppURL initiative to make apps work more like the web. Management signaled a consumer-facing product is imminent, with a possible Android integration to surface in-app content. The company recently introduced a sponsored-ads feature to begin generating revenue and has about 100 advertisers signed. The new funding will be used to ramp engineering hires and expand internationally; the company currently has an ~80-strong headcount. Quixey builds an app search engine focused on improving app discoverability by powering partners’ backend app-search products rather than running a consumer-facing service. The company uses novel data-collection and algorithmic techniques that analyze the world around apps — mentions, reviews and contextual signals — rather than relying solely on app metadata. Quixey works with partners such as OEMs, mobile carriers, web platforms, browsers and search engines, and cannot disclose specific customers due to partner agreements. It is expanding internationally and plans to roll out its app search engine in a dozen more languages. Quixey has been rapidly scaling its team, growing from 6 to 30 employees in the past year and planning to surpass 60 by year-end with hires on its data, technical and research teams. The company is also exploring app discovery in the app-enabled auto industry and expects additional partner-driven announcements in the coming months. Quixey builds a "functional search" engine that scans major app stores and crawls blogs, review sites, forums, and social media to determine what apps do. Its search returns apps for queries like "baseball scores" and lets users filter by platform. The engine supports Windows and Mac apps, iGoogle, extensions, and mobile platforms rather than being limited to iOS and Android. Quixey can also power search for other app stores, search engines, and websites to broaden distribution. The company will use its new funding to continue securing partnerships with app stores and other large third-party app resources, and it has more than 25 potential partnerships in the pipeline. Financially, Quixey closed a $3.8 million Series A and had previously raised $400,000, bringing disclosed total funding to $4.2 million.

No current team members are available.