Giphy Taps Alphaworks For The Final $100K In Its $2.5M Series A

Giphy, the betaworks-backed search engine for gifs, is today opening up a slice of its $2.5 million Series A on the equity crowdfunding site Alphaworks.

Alphaworks is a site run by Nick Chirls, in collaboration with betaworks, that lets accredited investors within a startup’s community invest a small amount of funding to get a cut of equity. It follows a similar model to Kickstarter or Indiegogo, in that it’s a self-serve model for the investors/backers, but Alphaworks obviously has more t’s to cross and i’s to dot in terms of regulation.

Alphaworks has already facilitated rounds for See.me and Quibb, and is now moving to help Giphy closed an oversubscribed Series A.

The whole purpose of Alphaworks is to let community contributors feel like they own a stake in the products they live, making Giphy a great fit for the platform.

In a perfect world, once legislation permits, anyone will be able to fund their favorite startups on the platform without having to be an accredited investor. But that waits on legislation.

Giphy recently raised a $2.5 million round with investment predominantly from betaworks, along with Lerer Ventures, RRE Ventures, and CAA Ventures. The $100,000 being raised on Alphaworks is just the icing on that cake.