Venture Capital News: VIRURL Raises $1.2M Seed Round
2012-05-09
LOS ANGELES, CA, Viral advertising platform announced the closing of a $1.2 million seed funding round, and the launch of its public beta.
VIRURL (http://virurl.com), a viral advertising platform that allows brands and media owners to instantly launch viral campaigns by incentivizing Web users to share links with their friends, today announced the closing of a $1.2 million seed funding round and launch of its public beta. The financing was led by Tice Capital LLC, a Dallas investment company focusing on the technology and media categories, and Los Angeles Syndicate of Technology. Several other angel investors joined in the financing round.
Concurrent with the financing, Merrill Brown joins as VIRURL's chairman. Brown, who was MSNBC.com's founding editor, is a New York-based consultant and advisor. Brown helped launch numerous early stage ventures and advises many companies in the advertising, marketing and digital media fields. VIRURL has also engaged Indomitable Entertainment, a diversified media and entertainment company, for assistance with developing strategic partnerships and engaging customers and clients. Dominic Ianno, CEO of Indomitable, will join the board, and Boyd Bishop, Indomitable's head of digital media, will work closely with VIRURL on its business development efforts.
"We know that people are social, and that the Web is social, so it makes sense that ads should be social as well," said Francisco Diaz-Mitoma, CEO and Co-founder of VIRURL. "The holy grail for brand advertisers is having a piece of their content go viral -- it really is about peer-to-peer sharing -- and with VIRURL, we've created an online marketplace that makes that possible in under 60 seconds."
VIRURL launched their alpha version in late 2011, and already serves more than 40,000 registered users, each of whom has at least 100 Facebook friends. Over 1,000 content marketers have applied for access to advertise on the VIRURL platform. The VIRURL tool enables brands to leverage Web users to begin the online social sharing process. Marketers simply visit VIRURL.com, create an account, upload their own budget, determine a cost-per-click, and post their content or marketing opportunity to the site. VIRURL users are then compensated for each click they can generate to that content, whether via email, Twitter, Facebook, or any approved social vehicle. All revenue from clicks originating on Facebook will be donated to the charity of each user's choice. This simple yet effective approach to marketing provides brands with powerful tools to easily syndicate their content online.
"VIRURL users have already delivered more than 1.7 million clicks to media across the Web while collecting over $20,000in earnings for themselves," said VIRURL Chairman, Merrill Brown. "With our Seed financing closed, we look forward to continuing our rapid growth while investing in tools to help give publishers, brands and entrepreneurs an opportunity to quickly syndicate their content on the Web."
"We believe VIRURL has a unique and effective vision for viral marketing that will significantly impact advertising and web analytics," said Mathew Guliner, Head of Corporate Development, Indomitable Entertainment. "In the past few years, we have seen how peer-to-peer sharing is vital for a brand's success in the marketplace, and as a result, we are firm believers that VIRURL will ultimately alter the future of advertising both domestically and internationally."
VIRURL was founded by Francisco Diaz-Mitoma, the founder and former CEO of social gaming company Titan Gaming (now Playsino) and Tim Symington, a successful web entrepreneur who founded several technology companies, including a web-advertising platform that grew to over 90,000 publishers in under six months of operation.
For more information, please visit http://www.VIRURL.com
About VIRURL
VIRURL is an online marketplace that allows brands to create instant viral marketing and advertising campaigns on the web. The VIRURL platform enables marketers to launch global viral campaigns by compensating Internet users to share videos, articles, music, promotional material and other media with their friends via digital formats such as email, or social networks.
About Los Angeles Syndicate of Technology
Los Angeles Syndicate of Technology, Inc. (OTCBB: LAST) is a publicly traded Business Development Company (BDC) operating as a venture fund and technology incubator that creates, builds, and invests in web and mobile technology companies. LAST develops digital media, social networking, and life sciences products in its technology incubator, and has a portfolio of six companies at different stages of development. LAST's mission is to foster technology innovation in Los Angeles by partnering with the most talented entrepreneurs of southern California and providing them with the capital, support and tools to bring their ideas to market and commercialize their products.
About INDOMITABLE
Indomitable Entertainment is a diversified media and entertainment company located in New York and Los Angeles. Indomitable currently operates four synergistic lines of business -- feature film executive producing (Soul Surfer, The Whistleblower, Red Machine), Broadway advisory (Ghost the Musical, Breakfast at Tiffany's), digital media advisory (VIRURL, Ology) and branded entertainment, where the firm brings brands into its content and digital media endeavors.
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