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Distractify Raises $7M in Series A

2014-06-25
NEW YORK, NY, Media platform that helps people create and discover compelling content, today announced that it has raised $7 million in Series A funding.
Distractify, a media platform that helps people create and discover compelling content, today announced that it has raised $7 million in Series A funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from Lerer Ventures, Advancit Capital and the CAA. The company plans to use the funding to fuel its growth by expanding the team, moving into new verticals and launching mobile products.

'In less than a year, Distractify has grown to 50 million unique users a month, an extraordinary feat with just a small staff of ten writers,' said Jeremy Liew, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. 'We are thrilled to partner with Quinn Hu and to support the company™s incredible growth.'

The way people consume content today is evolving as social platforms like Facebook, Reddit, Flipboard and Stumbleupon allow content to be shared around as a medium for communication. Founded by Quinn Hu, Distractify leverages the power of these platforms to empower creators to share their stories. Hu began experimenting with viral content six years ago on Youtube where he built a massive following on Youtube for both his original and crowdsourced content.

Leveraging everything he had learned, he launched Distractify in October 2013. Today, the company has 10 full-time writers on staff, over 50 million unique visitors a month and, in the past four months, 10 of the company™s stories have generated over a million shares on Facebook.

'We™re fortunate to be in an era where great stories can do more than simply be consumed by a limited audience,' said Quinn Hu, founder and CEO of Distractify. 'With the help of this funding, we will experiment with new ways to amplify the impact our content can have on the world.'

About Distractify
Distractify is a media platform that helps people create and discover compelling content. Founded in 2013 by Quinn Hu, the company is headquartered in New York and backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Lerer Ventures, Advancit Capital and the CAA. http://distractify.com/

About Lightspeed Venture Partners
Lightspeed Venture Partners is a leading venture capital firm with over $2.8 billion of committed capital under management and investment professionals and advisors in Silicon Valley, India, and Israel. Over the past two decades, Lightspeed partners have backed more than 200 consumer and enterprise companies, many of which have become leaders in their respective markets, including Aerohive, Blue Nile, Brocade, Ciena, DoubleClick, eHealth, Fusion-io, Grubhub, The Honest Company, Informatica, Nest, Nicira, Nimble Storage, Playdom, Riverbed, Snapchat, and XtremIO http://www.lsvp.com.
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