Mass Relevance, a startup that helps media companies and brands tap into this crazy Twitter thing, has raised $3.3 million in Series A funding.
The round was led by Austin Ventures, with money from Battery Ventures, Floodgate, Allegro Venture Partners, and Metamorphic Ventures. The startup previously raised $2.2 million in seed funding from most of the same backers — Battery is the only addition.
Mass Relevance pulls content from Twitter and other social networks (it announced a tweet syndication deal with Twitter last year), filters the updates according to a customer’s needs, then creates visualizations that can be embedded on a website or displayed on pretty much any screen, including TVs, billboards, and in-store signs. Founder and CEO Sam Decker says that the company started out doing custom work for each customer, but it has “productized” that work into standard visualizations showing trends, conversations, maps, polls, Q&As, and more.
The company says its clients have included the Big Four television networks, seven of the top 10 cable networks, Target, Cisco, Ford, Pepsi, and Victoria’s Secret. Mass Relevance first caught on with media companies who wanted to pull content from Twitter, Decker says, but brands and advertising agencies are getting interested too. That interest can provide monetization opportunities for publishers (say if a brand wants to sponsor Mass Relevance content on a publisher’s site), but it also a reflects growing brand interest in running social network content on their own properties — for example, the company is helping Pepsi display tweets related to its “Live For Now” campaign.
Decker says one of the main goals for the funding is to “lean in to the demand we’ve experienced from brands and agencies” by building more products designed for their needs. He plans to continue growing the company in Austin, while also hiring a few people in other cities, especially New York.
The Mass Relevance culture is driven by our most valued asset: our people. Shortly after Mass Relevance was founded, the founding team discussed their core values. Two years later, with a full executive team, they took another pulse and things were still aligned. From that, we developed our core values, a list of fundamental principles that reflect our innovation, our work ethic and office culture, our dedication to collaboration and our whimsical charisma. But we know it’s not just about...
Austin Ventures (“AV”) has worked with talented entrepreneurs to build valuable companies for over 25 years. With $3.9 billion under management, AV is the most active venture capital and growth equity firm in Texas and one of the most established in the nation. With an investment focus on business services and supply chain, financial services, new media, Internet, and information services, AV invests at all stages of company development, from $100,000 in “planned experiments” in early-stage ideas to $100+...
FLOODGATE is a venture capital firm specializing in micro-cap investments in start-ups. The firm seeks to invest in technology related sectors. It typically invests between $150,000 and $1 million. The firm prefers to invest in companies located in either the San Francisco Bay Area or in Austin, Texas. It prefers to invest alongside other experienced private investors or top-tier venture firms. FLOODGATE is based in Palo Alto, California.
Battery Ventures is a venture capital firm with offices in Boston, Silicon Valley, Israel. They invest in technology driven companies.
Metamorphic Ventures is a venture capital fund that invests in start-up and early-stage businesses exclusively in the digital media and transaction technology sectors. These technology companies tend to be cutting edge leaders in a highly focused market. Our digital media practice is primarily directed toward online and mobile advertising technologies, analytics, and tech enabled services. Our financial technology practice is primarily based on transaction processing services. We assist our entrepreneurs in many aspects of the venture needs, often from the founding...
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