Wrap Raises $12.7M Series B, Launches Its Mobile Storytelling Platform Publicly

Spontaneous mobile experiences should be as effortless as possible, and the process of navigating the app store to download a company’s native app can often miss a user’s attention span.

So goes the thinking with Wrap, which focuses on helping companies create highly interactive bite-sized mobile web experiences for its users to engage with.

The company announced Thursday that it had raised a $12.7 million Series B round of funding, led by Raine Capital and ProSieben with participation from Christopher Crain of Crain Communications, Dream Incubator, FF Angel LLC, Salesforce Ventures and Transmedia Capital. The company has raised $18.7 million to date.

“With this new round of funding, we’ll be able to optimize our product features, grow the team and expand our go-to market strategy,” Wrap CEO and founder Eric Greenberg said in a press release. “From retail to leisure, advertising to publishing and more, we’re excited to push mobile storytelling forward to deliver content combined with sophisticated computing functionality in a beautiful user experience that all mobile users deserve.”

Wrap also revealed Thursday that it has hired Peter Foster, a former Yahoo Vice President, as their Chief Revenue Officer.

Screen Shot 2015-09-03 at 2.58.26 AM

In addition to the funding announcement, today Wrap is launching their mobile storytelling and commerce platform, previously in private beta, to the public. Wrap offers a platform where mobile advertisers can build these “bite-size” web apps and give users access to more interactive content.

Greenberg sees these new tools as a clear contribution to what he believes is Wrap’s larger goal, “democratizing the web.”

“If it’s inexpensive and simple to create an interactive user experience, and that user experience is compelling, then it will make sense that a lot of users will want to take part,” Greenberg told TechCrunch.

Accessibility is key to carrying out this mission. Users can create interactive brand experiences through Wrap in a few hours or even just a matter of minutes using the template-heavy creator, without ever touching a line of code.

WrapThe potential for Wrap’s web app creator to alter mobile user experiences is enormous. I chatted with Greenberg about how I had just been to a music festival where I was instructed to download a native event app to see basic detail like a performance schedule and maps. In situations like these, Wrap offers organizations the opportunity to simply drop a link into a confirmation email and create a more palatable experience for users, all without having to hire a full team dedicated to developing an app that will likely only be used for a few hours at most.

Wrap’s service has a tiered pricing structure that starts at $100 a month for small businesses and builds to monthly payments of several thousands of dollars for larger corporations. In addition, the company will also be providing free accounts to users creating non-commercial content with the app.