• videogram

  Participated · Equity · Mar 2016

  Videogram (renamed from Cinemacraft) offers video engagement and display tools for publishers and creators, including dynamic embeds, auto-generated GIFs, a whitelabel customizable player, auto-embeds and channel embeds for YouTube. The company also relaunched an iOS app with frame-based editing and GIF creation tools and operates a content platform featuring hundreds of channels including Tyra Banks and others. As part of the recent funding, Asahi Broadcasting’s VC arm will deploy Videogram’s technology across its consumer-facing media properties in Japan. Videogram plans to use the new capital to pursue multi-channel network partners in Asia (principally Japan, India and Vietnam) and the U.S. ahead of a planned Series B later this year. The company last raised a $3.9M Series A in February 2015 and is described in the article as a three-year-old startup. Product features and partner deals (e.g., Bitstar) underpin its go-to-market rather than disclosed revenue or user metrics.

• FanDuel

  Participated · Series E · Jul 2015

  FanDuel operates a fantasy sports platform offering one-day game options for NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and college football and basketball, targeting customers in the U.S. and Canada. The company was founded in 2010 as a spinout from HubDub in Edinburgh and is now headquartered in New York City. FanDuel announced a $275M Series E that it says was oversubscribed, bringing total capital raised to $363M and valuing the company at over $1 billion. The new capital will be used to boost customer acquisition across the U.S. and Canada and to accelerate new products, features and growth initiatives. FanDuel also plans to continue building out its management team and suggested the funding could be a step toward a future IPO. FanDuel operates a one-day fantasy sports platform that runs daily and weekly contests across desktop, mobile and tablet. The company highlights industry partnerships with media and sports brands including Yahoo, ESPN, CBS, NBC and the Orlando Magic. FanDuel says it represents 65% of the daily and weekly fantasy sports market and expects to pay out more than $400 million to users in 2014. The business supports fantasy football, baseball, hockey, basketball and college contests and serves players in head-to-head and multi-player formats. FanDuel currently staffs 106 employees with offices in New York and Edinburgh and plans to expand those teams. The company intends to continue introducing new products and features to reach a wider North American audience and deepen relationships with leagues and media partners. FanDuel is a New York-based daily fantasy sports game operator offering one-day fantasy football, baseball, hockey and basketball contests. Launched in 2009 by Lesley Eccles and CEO Nigel Eccles, the company enables consumers to draft teams for head-to-head or multi-player contests and compete for cash payouts. Over the past 12 months it developed mobile offerings and signed partnerships with Sports Illustrated and Sporting News. FanDuel has offices in Edinburgh as well as New York and employs 40 people. The company plans to use the funds to expand its teams in New York and Edinburgh and to continue introducing new features to players across North America. FanDuel runs daily and short-duration fantasy sports contests that pay out prizes immediately after games finish, positioning itself as a game of skill rather than gambling. The company focuses solely on U.S. sports and has operated this model since 2009. FanDuel is based in New York and Scotland. Its revenues grew fourfold over a six-month period reported in the article, and the site paid out over $10 million in fantasy winnings in 2011. The company said it planned to pay out up to $4 million per month for the baseball season. Competitors mentioned include DraftStreet and DraftKings. FanDuel operates a daily fantasy sports site offering short-term fantasy contests. The company has shown rapid growth: its payouts rose from $1.5 million last season to over $10 million in league winnings. It recently opened a New York office alongside existing offices in Edinburgh and San Francisco. FanDuel closed a $4 million Series B to support product development and hiring. The timing of the raise coincided with the start of the new NFL season.

• Locket

  Participated · Seed · Feb 2015

  Locket provides a lock-screen messaging app called ScreenPop that lets Android users snap a photo and send it directly to friends' lock screens without opening an app. Users can add emojis, doodles and captions to every photo, and photos sent to friends last only until the recipient swipes to unlock their phone. The app launched a beta in which many users were sending over 40 photos per day. ScreenPop is available for free on Google Play. Locket raised $3.2M in funding to support the company’s development and marketing efforts. The company is led by CEO and co-founder Yunha Kim and is based in San Francisco, CA. Locket is an Android application that places ads and other content on users' lock screens and lets users earn small amounts when they swipe to engage. The app launched this summer and has worked with dozens of brands including Hershey’s, HotelTonight, Sunny D, Sears, ZipCar, eBay, and Spotify. Advertisers report click-through rates on Locket campaigns ranging from about 3 to 5 percent. Users earn only pennies per hour from swipes, and Locket has been adding non-ad content such as weather, quotes, news, and photos from 500px to encourage adoption. The company has also scored an undisclosed content deal with another top app maker. Locket is led by co-founder and CEO Yunha Kim and is in the process of raising a multi-million dollar funding round due to close next year. Locket’s Android app serves full-screen, targeted advertisements on users’ smartphone lock screens and pays users per swipe (1¢ per swipe, capped at 3¢ per hour). Users can swipe one way to engage with an advertiser (website, coupon, trailer, etc.) or swipe the other way to go to their homescreen. Ads are targeted using Facebook profile data (or a short questionnaire), geolocation, app-usage and engagement history. At launch the company has about eight advertisers onboard, will run house ads, and expects more than ten advertisers within a month; it also has undisclosed deals in the works with two Fortune 500 firms. Locket operates an in-house creative team and a technical crew that tests ads on 20 top Android phones and is working to limit battery impact and broad device compatibility during its beta. The founders are Yunha Kim, Paul Jang, and Christopher Crawford, and the team is currently working out of a Manhattan apartment.

• Cinemacraft

  Participated · Series A · Feb 2015

  Cinemacraft offers HTML5 "videograms" that display a selection of segments from a video so viewers can click to skip to specific parts, increasing engagement. Its embed formats work as social media cards, web embeds, and as a format for ad servers and display ads. The company charges paying publishers $1 per CPM and shares ad revenue with free users when Cinemacraft inserts video ads; the CEO said the company is making revenue. Cinemacraft reports higher engagement metrics for videograms (typically 40–60% click-through rate versus a 25–40% single-frame average). Engineering is centered in Tokyo with a newly opened Mumbai office and a small team, and the company recently added a COO and plans to hire additional developers. Management intends to use the new funding to push international expansion and product development, and may pursue a Series B if it sees hyper-growth. Cinemacraft builds "Videograms," interactive HTML5 images that highlight multiple clips from a video instead of a single freeze-frame thumbnail. An algorithm selects which frames appear on a Videogram, enabling publishers to create visual summaries and increase engagement. Viewers can comment on and share individual clips, and publishers can place ads within Videograms that refresh based on the most popular frames. Cinemacraft says Videograms improve monetization and social media marketing and help retain viewers who might otherwise abandon videos within the first seconds. The company has run campaigns for clients including Fox Pictures, Sony Pictures and Capitol Records. Cinemacraft will use its latest funding to scale globally, improve its platform and expand its core team; total funding to date is $2 million. Cinemacraft is building a cloud-based interactive mobile broadcast platform that streams video and other rich media to a wide range of handsets, including low-end feature phones. The platform supports delivery over 2.5G (30–60 kbps), 3G (100–250 kbps), 4G (300+ kbps) and Wi‑Fi/broadband (400–1000 kbps) to address weak bandwidth and latency environments. Supported content types include movies, TV programs, music, games, comics and interactive video ads. The company aims to create a unified interactive media platform to overcome fragmentation in the mobile ecosystem. Management says it will use new funding to build an interactive video ad network across Japan, the US, India and Indonesia and to develop ad-supported consumer video apps. To date the company has raised a total of US$900,000.

• FreeWheel

  Participated · Equity · Apr 2010

  FreeWheel provides a platform for dynamic ad insertion in on-demand and live video feeds online and offers monetization rights management to help pay TV and streaming providers monetize digital content. The company targets cable, satellite, and telco TV providers seeking to make TV shows available on mobile, tablet, and connected-TV devices while creating incremental ad revenue. DirecTV has become both a client and a strategic investor, planning to deploy FreeWheel across its online properties to manage ad sales, delivery, and partner compensation. FreeWheel’s platform is already used by partners including AOL, ESPN, FOX, NBC Universal, Sky, Turner, and VEVO. The startup previously raised two rounds totaling about $30 million from investors such as Battery Ventures, Foundation Capital, Turner Broadcasting, and Steamboat Ventures; terms of the DirecTV investment were not disclosed. Co-founder Doug Knopper said strategic investments provide contacts and industry insight that help the company execute commercial relationships and adapt to changing digital-distribution models. FreeWheel builds technology that lets marketers and publishers manage video advertising campaigns across a variety of distribution sites. Its platform enables media companies to operate an advertising platform for online video, including managing ad sales rights, producing inventory forecasts for live or on-demand content, delivering a yield-optimized set of ads, and analyzing video business performance. The company serves over two billion ad impressions per month and counts clients such as Turner, VEVO, CBS and MLB.com. FreeWheel announced formalized agreements with Discovery Communications and ESPN Internet Ventures to help manage ad businesses and monetize digital video content. Founded in 2007 by former DoubleClick employees, the company has raised a total of nearly $30 million to date. It plans to use the new investment to build out product development and scale its infrastructure.

No current team members are available.