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Woven Digital, the Culver City-based startup that runs UPROXX and BroBible, has raised $18 million in a Series A round.
Led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), the round also included contributions from Advancit Capital, The San Francisco 49ers, United Talent Agency, senior partners from leading entertainment law firm Ziffren Brittenham LLP, MySpace and SGN co-founder Chris DeWolfe, Buddy Media co-founder Mike Lazerow, and former NBA players Baron Davis and Jermaine O’Neal.
In addition to the financing, IVP will provide Woven Digital with a new board member in one of its principals, Somesh Dash.
“IVP is incredibly well regarded for their support of entrepreneurs and their track record of working with innovative technology and media companies,” said co-founder and CEO Scott Grimes in a statement. “We couldn’t be more excited to partner with IVP and Somesh in particular. He brings a wealth of experience, strategic perspective, and relationships to our company.”
“Woven’s expertise in developing and selling high-quality content, along with their innovative content management technology, positions the company to differentiate itself in the digital publishing arena,” said Somesh Dash, principal at IVP. “We’re big fans of the team and are thrilled to partner with Scott, Colin and the rest of the team to help accelerate Woven’s next phase of growth.”
Woven, which targets the much-coveted 18- to 34-year-old male demographic through Web properties including the aforementioned UPROXX, a pop culture news site specializing in BuzzFeed-modeled “viral” content, and BroBible, a “lifestyle” news site designed for college-aged men, plans to direct the funding toward a number of internal development initiatives. These include increasing editorial production, accelerating technological development, augmenting its ad sales team, and expanding Woven Studios, its original video production branch.
“We’ve worked hard to assemble the pieces needed to fulfill our vision of becoming a dominant pop culture media and content company. This financing will be the catalyst that enables us to more quickly execute,” said Digiaro.
The round is the latest in a series of recent substantive developments for the 2010-founded company. In April of this year, Woven acquired UPROXX and installed Colin Digiaro as President. The publisher also named Ben Blank its Chief Creative Officer and appointed Michael Polesetsky as General Counsel in June and August, respectively.
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