In its first round of external funding, Swagbucks announced a $60 million round today led by Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV). It was also announced that current TCV partner and former Fandago and Shopzilla CEO Chuck Davis will now lead Swagbucks as their CEO replacing founder Josef Gorowitz. Gorowitz will change roles to become President of the company.
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Founded in 2008 out of El Segundo, Swagbucks has become the Web’s leading rewards discovery platform. Swagbucks allows their members to earn virtual currency, called Swag Bucks, by using the site to play online games, watch videos, or participate in market research. Since their launch, Swagbucks has awarded over $63 million in real life awards to its customers from participating companies like Amazon and Starbucks. Swagbucks currently has over 10 million members, and generated over $53 million in revenue in 2013.
Swagbucks is already available in the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK, but is looking to expand further into Europe. "We will focus on major expansion in mobile, company growth and new key product initiatives that make our current offerings more robust and bring in new multimedia and content to the service," Gorowitz said.
The funding will be used to enhance their mobile platform: "Swagbucks’ mobile apps currently feature search, entertainment and deals -- our first step will be to migrate our other channels from web to mobile for games, surveys and shopping, and then to make all these channels much deeper, more engaging and developed," Gorowitz said.
