Company releases non-flash based licensing platform, traction soars. Company raises Series A led by First Round Capital and Crosscut Ventures. SANTA MONICA, Calif., July 31
SANTA MONICA, Calif., July 31 /PRNewswire/ -- GumGum, an analytics and
monetization platform for content online, announced today that it has secured
a Series A round of financing. First Round Capital and Crosscut Ventures will
co-lead the round. Howard Morgan and Brian Garrett join the company's board of
directors.
The Series A funding will enable the company to build out Version 2 of its
licensing product. No longer utilizing Flash technology, the new version is an
enormous leap forward, providing full flexibility with content, improved
monetization and no required changes in existing workflow between publishers
and content providers
GumGum has experienced explosive growth with its new offering. Despite
being in private beta for the last 60 days, GumGum is currently tracking over
300 million license views per month.
GumGum continues to validate its usage-based approach to
content-licensing. GumGum adds MTV Europe as well as Gawker Media's Gawker,
Jezebel, Defamer, and io9 to its growing list of publishers. "GumGum reduces
our photo licensing costs while still allowing us to publish high quality
photographs from a variety of photo agencies," said Nick Denton, Publisher of
Gawker Media.
"GumGum has developed an innovative platform to connect content creators
with publishers," said Howard Morgan of First Round Capital. "While a
fixed-fee content license might make sense for offline media, it makes no
sense online. We feel confident that this team can grow a great business. The
company has already signed several of the world's largest photo agencies and
is generating millions of content views per day."
"GumGum is committed to solving the content licensing problem on the
Internet. We have listened to our customers and are proud to announce this
game-changing service," said Ophir Tanz, CEO and co-founder of GumGum. "First
Round Capital and Crosscut Ventures are absolutely top-notch. We are thrilled
with their involvement and look forward to working with them as we continue to
grow the company."
About GumGum
GumGum represents a new business model for content licensing online. We
use perfect information to facilitate a fair transaction between publishers
and content providers. The result is a system that leverages usage-based
licensing models to enhance monetization, increase access to content and much
more!
GumGum was founded by Ophir Tanz and Ari Mir in 2006. The site publicly
launched in November 2007 and currently tracks over 300 million license views
per month.
David Sacks (former COO of PayPal and current CEO of Geni.com) and Michael
Jones (President of Userplane/SVP at AOL) sit on the company's advisory board.
The company previously raised $225k in angel funding.
About First Round Capital
First Round Capital is an early stage venture capital firm managed by Josh
Kopelman, founder of Half.com and Howard Morgan, a founder of Idealab. First
Round Capital provides seed-stage investment for innovative technology
companies, often providing a company's first outside capital. As former
entrepreneurs, the principals understand the challenges of launching a new
enterprise and look to take an active role in portfolio companies.
About Crosscut Ventures
Crosscut Ventures is a Los Angeles-based seed-stage venture capital firm
founded by Rick Smith and Brian Garrett. Crosscut brings a depth of
experience and an extensive network of relationships to help a company through
its earliest phases of growth. Crosscut is looking for seed-stage
opportunities in digital media, which includes online advertising, mobile,
gaming, consumer internet and next generation infrastructure and analytics.
Above all else, we are looking for great entrepreneurs who understand what it
takes to win and who are looking for a financial partner committed to building
world-class companies.
http://www.gumgum.com
SOURCE GumGum
