Earlier this year we wrote about Grogger, a CMS that would allow blogs to crowdsource their content. That product didn’t work out — publishers didn’t want to have to change to a new CMS — but the company has now pivoted to tackle a related problem, and it’s got a new name: Kapost. Today the company is announcing that it’s closed a $1.1 million Series A round led by High Country Venture and Highway 12 Venture, with Zelkova Ventures, Kal Vepuri, Tango, David Tisch, Jason Kiefer, and David Cohen participating (the company was also a part of the TechStars Boulder program).
So what exactly is Kapost? CEO Toby Murdock describes it as a newsroom platform that publishers can use to manage content submitted by a large number of contributors. Murdock explains that many online publishers that feature content from many contributors, like The Huffington Post, have to build their own custom systems for managing, editing, and eventually publishing this incoming content — Kapost wants to fill this niche. And unlike Grogger, which required publishers to tie a new CMS into their workflow, Kapost will integrate with existing CMS solutions.
At this point the product is still pretty early — it includes core functionality like assigning stories to authors, but some of the more advanced features, like distributing payments to contributors and editorial calendars, are still in development. We’ll have more Kapost as it continues to build out its featureset.