Teen Social Network Let Raises $600K

Let, a teen social networking app with a focus on gamification, is announcing that it has raised $600,000 in seed funding.

That’s not a huge amount of money, but the funding is interesting in the context of Let’s history. When I first met founder Pascal Lorne a few months ago, he told me that when when he launched the Let app in fall 2013, it wasn’t reaching the right audience, so he turned down outside investment and bought out his co-founders, while the developers continued working on the project part-time in exchange for equity.

A revamped version of the app launched in March of this year — allowing users to post photos, videos, and other content, and to give each other stars for updates that they like. The posts and users with the most engagement are then featured on Let’s leaderboard. The company has also been recruiting what Lorne calls “the long tail” of teenage social media celebrities.

Let isn’t sharing any user numbers, but Lorne sounds pretty happy with the growth so far (and presumably his new investors are, too). He did say that 13- to 18-year-old girls make up about 75 percent of the Let’s user base.

Lorne also said that while the company offers both iPhone and Android apps, the iPhone is clearly more popular among Let’s users, particularly since the release of iOS 8. (iOS devices accounted for 96 percent of downloads in the past two weeks.) As a result, Lorne said he’ll be “betting everything on Apple,” and he’s debating whether to shut down the Android app entirely.

The new funding comes from French firm Breega Capital, David Graham (owner of talent management company PressPlay), and friends and family. Lorne said he employs a full-time team of 13 people, split between France and the United States, and he plans to raise a larger Series A soon.