Koji, a San Diego CA-based app store for the creator economy platform, raised $20M in Series B funding.
The round was led by Jump Capital, with participation from HBSE Ventures, Electric Feel Ventures, Visary Capital, Metaversal, University Growth Ventures, Galaxy Interactive, BITKRAFT,
as well as:
- Shivakumar Rajaraman, Head of Product at OpenSea and former VP Commerce at Meta;
- Francis Ma, Head of Google Firebase;
- Peeyush Ranjan, VP Engineering at Google;
- David Zhang, Director at Silver Lake;
- Scott Roberts, VP and Head of Business Development at LinkedIn;
- Keren Baruch, Product Lead for Creator Strategy at LinkedIn;
- Mohammad Barhoush, Director at IAC;
- Punit Singh Soni, CEO of Suki;
- Ujjwal Singh, head of Workplace at Facebook;
- Brett Chalabian, software engineer at Google; Michael Eisner, former CEO of Disney;
- Art Bilger, founder of WorkingNation;
- Stefano Corazza, VP at Adobe;
- Bhaumik Kotecha, head of Business Operations at Cash App;
- Chris Abad, Director of User Experience at Google;
- Kum Hong Siew, COO at Airbnb China; and
- others.
Saaya Nath, Vice President at Jump Capital, is joining Koji’s board of directors in conjunction with the fundraise.
The company intends to use the funds to grow its engineering and creator teams, accelerate development of the platform, and further develop its Web3 and crypto offerings.
Led by CEO Dmitry Shapiro and Chief Architect Sean Thielen, Koji provides a platform with hundreds of free apps created by Koji and its community of independent developers. The Koji Link in Bio gives creators on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and other social media platforms new ways to engage audiences, connect with supporters, and monetize.
Since launching in March 2021, over 150 thousand creators use Koji’s Link in Bio platform and over 200 apps to engage with their audiences. Koji’s app store includes everything from fun novelties like customizable games to utilities like Shoutout, an app that lets creators offer customized videos to their fans. Koji recently announced a suite of innovative Web3 apps, including commerce apps that offer product discounts for customers who own specific NFTs.
Powered by Koji’s platform, Koji apps open directly inside every social media app, without requiring any downloads or installs. These apps are not subject to App Store taxes, letting creators and app developers keep more of their earnings. New apps are released every week and are created by Koji’s community of independent developers, creator economy startups like Laylo, Subtext, and Fanfix, and Koji’s own in-house developers.
FinSMEs
26/01/2022