Epoxy Raises $6.5M From Upfront Ventures And Time Warner To Connect YouTubers With Fans

First there was YouTube. And from YouTube came an ecosystem of video creators who could use the platform to freely distribute their content and maybe make money from it. Then came the YouTube multichannel networks, which herded up all the creators in hopes of creating a giant mass of subscribers and video views.

With the mass scale of millions of subscribers and billions of views, suddenly advertisers were interested in the ecosystem, and they too built their own brand presences on the platform, essentially serving up “ads” as “content.” It wasn’t long before tools and analytics companies emerged, seeking to maximize growth and viewer engagement for the YouTube creators.

And seemingly all of them got funded.

Anyway, the latest company to get funded — Los Angeles-based Epoxy — is in the tools camp, and just raised a $6.5 million Series A round.

The round was led by existing investor Upfront Ventures, along with Time Warner Investments. Previous investors include Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, Advancit Capital, Greycroft Partners and Robert Downey Jr.’s Downey Ventures.

A few months ago we covered the formal launch of Epoxy, which provides a set of tools to enable video publishers on YouTube to measure social interactions with fans and to better engage with them. By doing so, the thinking goes, they’ll be able to grow those audiences and make regular fans into “superfans.”

The company generally targets two groups of users: the individual YouTube creators who pay about $20 a month for access to its SaaS platform and big enterprise customers like MCNs, traditional TV networks, brands, and ad agencies.

But Epoxy does more than just provide a pretty interface for responding to all the YouTube comments your viewers make; it also lets users see comments about their videos in far-off places like Twitter and Facebook, even when their channel or Twitter account isn’t specifically called out.

It also enables creators to more effectively share out their videos based on the unique character of each individual social network. Oh yeh, the platform also has a cool tool for users to clip their existing videos and repurpose them for Instagram.

With the funding, the company plans to expand its headcount. Currently it has about 15 full-time staff, and the majority of those are engineers. But CEO Juan Bruce says the company will be looking to expand its sales, marketing, and support teams in the coming weeks and months.