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Digital comics startup Madefire is shutting down
R.I.P. Madefire, a startup that recruited high-profile artists to reinvent comics for new formats and platforms.
An announcement on the Madefire website states the company entered into “an assignment of benefit for creditors” (explained as “a state-level insolvency proceeding similar to bankruptcy”) earlier this month, which was then reported this morning in The Beat. As a result, no new books will be published, users will not be able to purchase any additional books and they’re also encouraged to download all their purchased content before the end of the month.
This news affects other apps built with Madefire’s technology. The Archie comics app has shut down as well, with the publisher writing, “We realize this comes as a surprise and we are making every effort to do right by our loyal customer base,” specifically by offering readers a free one-month subscription to Comixology Unlimited. (Amazon acquired digital comics platform Comixology in 2014, launching an Unlimited subscription service two years later.)
Madefire first launched in 2012, back when publishers were experimenting with formats like motion comics. The company described its titles as “motion books,” combining the animation and effects of motion comics with a more traditional reading experience.
“Motion comics are a passive experience, a watching experience that is tantamount to bad animation – it’s like watching a movie,” co-founder and CEO Ben Wolstenholme said at the time. “Motion Books is a reading experience, actively controlled by the reader – it’s like reading a book. Our goal is to be the best reading experience developed for the iPad.”
Perhaps the most impressive thing about the company was the artists it had enlisted before launch, including Dave Gibbons and Bill Sienkiewicz.
More recently, Madefire announced partnerships with other tech platforms, including Snapchat and troubled augmented reality company Magic Leap.
According to Crunchbase, Madefire had raised $16.4 million in funding from investors including True Ventures, Plus Capital, Kevin Spacey (yes, that Kevin Spacey) and Drake, but The Beat reports that the total was “even more than that.”
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MoviePass co-founder’s PreShow Interactive raises $3M to expand into gaming
PreShow Interactive is giving gamers a new way to earn in-game currency in exchange for watching ads — a concept that’s become familiar in mobile games but hasn’t really made much headway on PCs or consoles.
The startup is led by MoviePass’ founding CEO Stacy Spikes. When I spoke to Spikes about PreShow two years ago, he was beta testing an app that provided users with free movie tickets in exchange for watching ads. But obviously, theatrical moviegoing has taken a big hit in the past year.
Spikes told me yesterday that he’d always hoped to bring the PreShow concept to four categories — theatrical movies, gaming, subscription streaming and video on demand — but the pandemic forced the startup to shift focus more quickly than expected and explore what a gaming experience might look like.
The current plan is to launch a new PreShow Interactive app this summer, where viewers can connect their in-game accounts and identify how much virtual currency they want to earn. Then they watch a package of ads and PreShow will automatically transfer the currency to their account — in other words, it’s buying the currency for them.
Users will have to download a separate app to watch the ads and get the benefits, but Spikes said this is actually better than trying to integrate advertising or branded content into the game itself, which can be a slow process for the developer and the advertiser, while also being distracting for the players. And this means PreShow Interactive should be able to support 20,000 games at launch, across PCs, consoles and virtual reality.
Image Credits: PreShow Interactive
“We just didn’t see the purpose of spending the time on integrations when it’s not really necessary,” he added. “Our deal is only with the consumer for their time. We’re saying, ‘This is your time. It has value.’ ”
One of the key elements to Preshow’s approach is technology that can detect when the viewer is actually looking at their phone screen — the ads will stop playing if you turn away. This has been criticized as “creepy surveillance tech,” but Spikes claimed that early PreShow users have embraced it. He also argued that it’s more transparent than the data collection and targeting currently driving online advertising.
“We used to think data was the new oil, but now our feeling is that permission and engagement and attention is the new oil,” he said.
In addition to revealing its new strategy, PreShow is announcing that it has raised $3 million in seed funding led by Harlem Capital, with participation by Canaan Partners, Wavemaker Partners, Front Row Fund, ROC Fund, BK Fulton and Monroe Harris.
And to be clear, Spikes said PreShow isn’t abandoning theatrical movies. He said that the PreShow app will eventually offer both movie and gaming deals “under one roof,” but brands aren’t currently eager to advertise to moviegoers.
“We’re ready to go when the marketplace is ready to go,” he said.
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Facebook introduces a new miniplayer that streams Spotify from the Facebook app
Facebook announced last week an expanded partnership with streaming music service Spotify that would bring a new way to listen to music or podcasts directly within Facebook’s app, which it called Project Boombox. Today, the companies are rolling out this integration via a new “miniplayer” experience that will allow Facebook users to stream from Spotify through the Facebook app on iOS or Android. The feature will be available to both free Spotify users and Premium subscribers.
The miniplayer itself is an extension of the social sharing option already supported within Spotify’s app. Now, when Spotify users are listening to content they want to share to Facebook, they’ll be able to tap the existing “Share” menu (the three-dot menu at the upper right of the screen) and then tap either “Facebook” or “Facebook News Feed.”
When a user posts an individual track or podcast episode to Facebook through this sharing feature, the post will now display in a new miniplayer that allows other people who come across their post to also play the content as they continue to scroll, or reshare it. (Cue MySpace vibes!)
Spotify’s paid subscribers will be able to access full playback, the company says. Free users, meanwhile, will be able to hear the full shared track, not a clip. But afterwards, they’ll continue to listen to ad-supported content on Shuffle mode, just as they would in Spotify’s own app.
One important thing to note here about how all this works is that the integration allows the music or podcast content to actually play from within the Spotify app. When a user presses play on the miniplayer, an app switch takes place so the user can log into Spotify. The miniplayer activates and controls the launch and playback in the Spotify app — which is how the playback is able continue even as the user scrolls on Facebook or if they minimize the Facebook app altogether.
This setup means users will need to have the Spotify mobile app installed on their phone and a Spotify account for the miniplayer to work. For first-time Spotify users, they’ll have to sign up for a free account in order to listen to the music shared via the miniplayer.
Spotify notes that it’s not possible to sign up for a paid account through the mini-player experience itself, so there’s no revenue share with Facebook on new subscriptions. (Users have to download the Spotify app and sign up for Paid accounts from there if they want to upgrade.)
The partnership allows Spotify to leverage Facebook’s reach to gain distribution and to drive both sign-ups and repeat usage of its app just as the COVID bump to subscriber growth may be wearing off. However, it’s still responsible for the royalties paid on streams, just as it was before, the company told TechCrunch, because its app is the one actually doing the streaming. It’s also fully in charge of the music catalog and audio ads that play alongside the content.
For Facebook, this deal means it now has a valuable tool to keep users spending time on its site — a metric that has been declining over the years, reports have indicated.
Spotify and Facebook have a long history of working together on music efforts. Facebook back in 2011 had been planning an update that would allow music subscription users to engage with music directly on Facebook, much like this. But those plans were later dialed back, possibly over music rights’ or technical issues. Spotify had also been one of the first media partners on Facebook’s ticker, which would show you in real time what friends were up to on Facebook and other services. And Spotify had once offered Facebook Login as the default for its mobile app. Today, as it has for years, Spotify users on the desktop can see what their Facebook friends are streaming on its app, thanks to social networking integrations.
The timing for this renewed and extended partnership is interesting. Now, both Facebook and Spotify have a mutual enemy with Apple, whose privacy-focused changes are impacting Facebook’s ad business and whose investments in Apple Music and Podcasts are a threat to Spotify. As Facebook’s own music efforts in more recent years have shifted toward partnership efforts — like music video integrations enabled by music label agreements — it makes sense that it would turn to a partner like Spotify to power a new streaming feature that supports Facebook’s broader efforts around monetizable tools and services aimed at the creator economy.
The miniplayer feature had been tested in non-U.S. markets, Mexico and Thailand, ahead of its broader global launch today.
In addition to the U.S., the integration is fully rolling out to users in Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, South Africa, Thailand and Uruguay.
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Catch&Release raises $14M to help marketers find and license content from across the web
Catch&Release founder and CEO Analisa Goodin told me that she wants to help brands break free from the limitations of stock photography — and that her startup has raised $14 million in Series A funding to achieve that goal.
Goodin explained that the company started out as an image research firm before becoming a product-focused, venture-backed startup in 2015. The Series A was led by Accel (with participation from Cervin Ventures and other existing investors), and it brings Catch&Release’s total funding to $26 million.
Stock media and video services are moving in this direction themselves, for example by introducing their own libraries of user-generated content. Goodin applauded this, and she said Catch&Release isn’t opposed to the use of stock photos — it integrates with these stock marketplaces. At the same time, she suggested that she has a much bigger vision.
“This isn’t just about UGC, this is about tapping into the creative potential of the internet,” she said.
After all, you can now find pretty much any kind of content you can imagine somewhere online, but “a lot of advertising agencies and brands have been trained that if a piece of content comes from the internet, avoid it,” because it’s just “too hard” to figure out how to license it. (And indeed, that’s why I went with a stock photo for the lead image of this post.)
Image Credits: Catch&Release
Catch&Release aims to make that process as simple as possible, first with a browser extension that allows marketers to save any media that they find on the web, anytime they think they might want to use it in their own campaigns (this is the “catch” part of the process). It even presents a “licensability score,” which is a rating based on factors like the person who posted the content, the description and the comments, indicating how likely it is that a marketer will actually be able to license this content.
Then, when someone from a brand or advertising agency decides that they want to use a piece of content, they can send a licensing request with a push of a button (this is the “release”). Catch&Releases also analyzes the content for anything else that needs to be cleared or obscured, such as a company logo.
While we’ve written about other tools for licensing online content, Goodin emphasized that Catch&Release isn’t just about finding photos for a social media campaign. Part of the goal, she said, is to erase the “stigma” around UGC, which now “represents the entire spectrum of culturally relevant content.”
For example, she showed me a Red Lobster commercial that looks like a normal TV ad, but was in fact assembled entirely from footage found online — something that’s been even more useful in the past year, with pandemic-related safety concerns around large shoots. (Catch&Release has also been used to license content for ads promoting TechCrunch’s parent company Verizon.)
Goodin added that the new funding will allow Catch&Release to continue investing in product, engineering and marketing.
“No one has defined the commercial licensing layer for the web,” she said. “What’s got me really excited to build this product is being that layer for the internet, not just for photos and videos, but for writing, art, graphics and building the commercial licensing engine of the web.”
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Daily Crunch: Facebook announces new audio products
Facebook reveals its Clubhouse competitor, Parler will return to Apple’s App Store and a helicopter flies on Mars. This is your Daily Crunch for April 19, 2021.
The big story: Facebook announces new audio products
Yes, these products include new Clubhouse-style Live Audio Rooms, as well as the ability for podcasters to share long-form audio, some new Spotify integration and a shorter format called Soundbites. Facebook is starting off by testing Live Audio Rooms in Facebook Groups.
“When we launched video rooms earlier last year, groups and communities were one of the bigger areas where that took off,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an interview with Platformer. “So, I think around audio, just given how much more accessible it is, that’ll be a pretty exciting area as well.”
The tech giants
Apple confirms it will allow Parler to return to App Store — Apple says that after Parler’s proposed updates, it should be approved for reinstatement to the App Store.
Consumer agency warns against Peloton Tread+ use, as company pushes back — The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is warning consumers to stop using the Tread+.
Xbox Cloud Gaming beta starts rolling out on iOS and PC this week — The service has been available in beta for Android users since last year, but it has been slow to expand to other platforms.
Startups, funding and venture capital
Clubhouse closes an undisclosed $4B valuation Series C round, as tech giants’ clones circle — We don’t know how much it raised, but it looks like Clubhouse has tripled the valuation it attained in January.
Alan raises $220M for its health insurance and healthcare super app — The company now covers 160,000 people.
General Motors leads $139M investment into lithium-metal battery developer, SES — GM is the latest big automaker to pick a horse in the race to develop better batteries for electric vehicles.
Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch
The Klaviyo EC-1 — Klaviyo may not be a household name yet, but in many ways, this startup has become the standard by which email marketers are judged.
European VC soars in Q1 — The blockbuster first quarter was not just an American affair.
Outdoor startups see supercharged growth during COVID-19 era — Startups that provide services like camper vans, private campsites and trail-finding apps became relevant to millions of new users when COVID-19 shut down indoor recreation.
(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)
Everything else
NASA makes history by flying a helicopter on Mars for the first time — This is a major achievement, in no small part because the atmosphere is so thin on Mars that creating a rotor-powered craft like Ingenuity that can actually produce lift is a huge challenge.
An interview with Andrew Yang — The New York mayoral candidate talks Amazon, cryptocurrency and automation.
Geico admits fraudsters stole customers’ driver’s license numbers for months — The second-largest auto insurer in the U.S. has fixed a security bug that allowed fraudsters to steal customers’ driver’s license numbers from its website.
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.
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Substack announces a $1M initiative to fund local journalists
While the seemingly unending debate around Substack has focused on well-known writers with a national profile, the newsletter platform just announced that it will be supporting local (presumably non-famous) journalists through a new program.
The startup described Substack Local as a $1 million initiative that will fund independent writers creating local news publications. Similar to the Substack Pro program, the company will offer cash advances of up to $100,000, as well as mentorship and “subsidized access” to health insurance and design services. In exchange, Substack will take 85% of subscription revenue for a year (its cut goes back to the standard 10% after that).
Applications are due by April 29, with participants selected by a panel of judges with their own Substack publications — Zeynep Tufekci of Insight, Anne Helen Petersen of Culture Study, Dick Tofel of Second Rough Draft and Rachel Larimore, managing editor of The Dispatch.
Substack said that through this initiative, it’s also partnering with New Zealand-based Stuff to launch two new publications covering under-served regions in the country.
A Substack skeptic might suggest that programs like this are an easy way to drum up positive publicity. (Facebook and Google have also announced programs to support local news.) In Substack’s case, this comes after the platform has been criticized for bankrolling transphobic writers with big advances — just a few days ago, the company revealed that it has recently signed lucrative contracts with transgender writers including Daniel Lavery.
Regardless of motivation, the need for more local journalism is real, with news deserts created by the shutdowns and struggles of many local newspapers. If there’s going to be any hope, it seems more likely to come from new, digitally-focused publications and independent journalists.
“This is not a grants program, nor is it inspired by philanthropic intent,” the company wrote in a blog post. “Our goal is to foster an effective business model for independent local news that provides ample room for growth.”
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Social audio startup Stationhead looks beyond music as it hits 100K monthly active users
When I’ve written about Stationhead in the past, I’ve focused on how the startup aims to bring the personality and interactivity of a live radio broadcast to streaming music. But CEO Ryan Star said his ambitions are broader now: “We’re going to be the largest social audio platform in the world.”
The startup says it’s growing quickly, with 100,000 monthly active users — a number that’s increasing by 65% each month — and 500,000 total users. There are 6,300 hosts on the platform, and they created nearly 2 million live and recorded streams in the first three months of the year.
COO Murray Levison told me that the pandemic has brought more artists to the platform as they look for new ways to reach their fans. For example, Cardi B joined the fan show Bardigangradio last month, prompting 132,000 paid streams of her new single on Apple Music and Spotify during the broadcast. (Stationhead integrates with both music streaming services — when a DJ cues up a song, it’s actually playing through your account.)
At the same time, both Star (who co-founded the company due to his own frustrations as an independent musician) and Levison suggested that playing music is not quite as central to their vision as it used to be. Instead, they said Stationhead is all about live audio broadcasting, with or without music.
From a product perspective, Levison said they’re trying to build “the best broadcasting tools for creators and everyday people to use.” At the same time, he added, “Music is still at the core of what we’ve built. Just like games are to Twitch, music is our social glue.”
Image Credits: Shervin Lainez / Stationhead
While the company emphasizes the live experience (which Levison described as “the core value prop”), Stationhead also supports recording shows for listening later, and apparently 50% of users are listening to both live and recorded shows. It has also been beta testing a tipping feature that will allow broadcasters to monetize their shows.
Of course, you can’t talk about social audio without talking about Clubhouse, which was attracting 2 million active users each week in January, according to CEO Paul Davison. Levison suggested that the buzz around Clubhouse has also benefited Stationhead as potential acquirers and investors get more excited about social audio. And Star argued that the companies are taking very different approaches.
“It’s in the name Clubhouse, it’s exclusive,” Star said. “It’s about social climbing and getting closer to the stage. [Stationhead is] living in the world where Cardi B was excited to meet her fans. We are for the 99 percent.”
Update: I also reached out to app store intelligence company SensorTower for its latest download data. SensorTower told me that StationHead has been installed 349,000 times globally, compared to 16.3 million installs for Clubhouse. (StationHead says that about 35% of its users are on the web and therefore not tracked by SensorTower.)
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TikTok funds first episodic public health series ‘VIRAL’ from NowThis
TikTok is taking another step toward directly funding publishers’ content with today’s announcement that it’s financially backing the production of media publisher NowThis’ new series, “VIRAL,” which will feature interviews with public health experts and a live Q&A session focused on answering questions about the pandemic. The partnership represents TikTok’s first-ever funding of an episodic series from a publisher, though TikTok has previously funded creator content.
Through TikTok’s Instructive Accelerator Program, which was formerly known as the Creative Learning Fund, other TikTok publishers have received grants and hands-on support from TikTok so they could produce quality instructive content for TikTok’s #LearnOnTikTok initiative. The program today is structured as four eight-week cycles, during which time publishers post videos four times per week.
NowThis had also participated in the Creative Learning Fund last year and was selected for the latest cycle of the Instructive Accelerator Program. But its “VIRAL” series is separate from these efforts.
NowThis says it brought the concept for the show to TikTok earlier this year outside of the accelerator program, and TikTok greenlit it. TikTok then co-produced the series and provided some funding. Neither NowThis nor TikTok would comment on the extent of the financial backing involved, however.
The “VIRAL” series itself is hosted by infectious disease clinical researcher Laurel Bristow, who spent the last year working on COVID treatments and research. Every Thursday, Bristow will break down COVID facts in easy-to-understand language, NowThis says, including things like vaccine efficacy, transmission timelines and treatment. The show will also bust COVID myths, provide information about ongoing public health risks and feature interviews with a cross-section of experts.
Each episode will be 45 minutes in length and will also include an interactive segment where the TikTok viewing audience will be able to engage in a real-time Q&A session about the show’s content. In total, five episodes are being produced, and will air starting on Thursday April 15 at 6 PM ET and will run through Thursday May 13 on the @NowThis main TikTok page.
@nowthisTune in to our new TikTok live show VIRAL on Thursdays at 6pm ET with host @kinggutterbaby♬ original sound – nowthis
NowThis has become one of the most-followed news media accounts on TikTok, with 4.6 million followers across its news and politics channels, since launching a little over a year ago. Because of its focus on video, it’s been a good fit for the TikTok’s platform.
The approach TikTok is taking with “VIRAL’s” production, it’s worth noting, stands in contrast to how other social media platforms are handling the pandemic and COVID-19 information. While most, including TikTok, have pledged to fact-check COVID-19 information, remove misinformation and conspiracies, point users to official sources for health information and provide other resources, TikTok is directly funding public health content featuring scientists and researchers, and then promoting it on its network.
The company explained to TechCrunch its thinking on the matter.
“As the pandemic continues to evolve, we think it’s important to provide our community an outlet to dispel misinformation and communicate with public health experts in real time,” said Robbie Levin, manager of Media Partnerships at TikTok. “NowThis has consistently been a great partner that produces engaging and informative content, so we felt this series would be an impactful and important avenue for our users to receive credible information on our platform,” Levin noted.
While the pandemic has driven the topic of choice here, paying creators for content is not new. And TikTok isn’t the only one to do so. Instagram and Snapchat are both funding creator content for their TikTok clones, Reels and Spotlight, respectively. And new social platforms like Clubhouse are funding creators’ shows, as well.
TikTok says it’s not currently talking to other publishers to produce more series like “VIRAL,” but it isn’t ruling out the idea of expanding its creator funding and producing efforts. In addition to its accelerator program, which is continuing, TikTok says if “VIRAL” proves successful and the community responds positively, it will pursue similar opportunities in the future.
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Wonder Dynamics raises $2.5M seed to equip indie filmmakers with AI-powered VFX
Practically every film production these days needs some kind of visual effects work, but independent creators often lack the cash or expertise to get that top-shelf CG. Wonder Dynamics, founded by VFX engineer Nikola Todorovic and actor Tye Sheridan, aims to use AI to make some of these processes more accessible for filmmakers with budgets on the tight side, and they’ve just raised $2.5 million to make it happen.
The company has its origins in 2017, after Sheridan and Todorovic met on the set of Rodrigo Garcia’s film Last Days in the Desert. They seem to have both felt that the opportunity was there to democratize the tools that they had access to in big studio films.
Wonder Dynamics is very secretive about what exactly its tools do. Deadline’s Mike Fleming Jr saw a limited demo and said he “could see where it will be of value in the area of world creation at modest budgets. The process can be done quickly and at a fraction of a traditional cost structure,” though that leaves us little closer than we started.
Sheridan and Todorovic (who jointly answered questions I sent over) described the system, called Wallace Pro, as taking over some of the grunt work of certain classes of VFX rather than a finishing touch or specific effect.
“We are building an AI platform that will significantly speed up both the production and post-production process for content involving CG characters and digital worlds. The goal of the platform is to reduce the costs associated with these productions by automating the ‘objective’ part of the process, leaving the artists with the creative, ‘subjective’ work,” they said. “By doing this, we hope to create more opportunities and empower filmmakers with visions exceeding their budget. Without saying too much, it can be applied to all three stages of filmmaking (pre-production, production and post-production), depending on the specific need of the artist.”
From this we can take that it’s an improvement to the workflow, reducing the time it takes to achieve some widely used effects, and therefore the money that needs to be set aside for them. To be clear this is distinct from another, more specific product being developed by Wonder Dynamics to create virtual interactive characters as part of the film production process — an early application of the company’s tools, no doubt.
The tech has been in some small scale tests, but the plan is to put it to work in a feature entering production later this year. “Before we release the tech to the public, we want to be very selective with the first filmmakers who use the technology to make sure the films are being produced at a high level,” they said. First impressions do matter.
The $2.5M seed round was led by Founders Fund, Cyan Banister, the Realize Tech Fund, Capital Factory, MaC Venture Capital, and Robert Schwab. “Because we are at the intersection of technology and film, we really wanted to surround ourselves with investment partners who understand how much the two industries will depend on each other in the future,” Sheridan and Todorovic said. “We were extremely fortunate to get MaC Venture Capital and Realize Tech Fund alongside FF. Both funds have a unique combination of Silicon Valley and Hollywood veterans.”
Wonder Dynamics will use the money to, as you might expect, scale its engineering and VFX teams to further develop and expand the product… whatever it is.
With their advisory board, it would be hard to make a mistake without someone calling them on it. “We’re extremely lucky to have some of the most brilliant minds from both the AI and film space,” they said, and that’s no exaggeration. Right now the lineup includes Steven Spielberg and Joe Russo (“obviously geniuses when it comes to film production and innovation”), UC Berkeley and Google’s Angjoo Kanazawa and MIT’s Antonio Torralba (longtime AI researchers in robotics and autonomy), and numerous others in film and finance who “offer us a wealth of knowledge when we’re trying to figure out how to move the company forward.”
AI is deeply integrated into many tech companies and enterprise stacks, making it a solid moneymaker in that industry, but it is still something of a fringe concept in the more creator-driven film and TV world. Yet hybrid production techniques like ILM’s StageCraft, used to film The Mandalorian, are showing how techniques traditionally used for 3D modeling and game creation can be applied safely to film production — sometimes even live on camera. AI is increasingly that part of the world, as pioneers like Nvidia and Adobe have shown, and it seems inevitable that it should come to film — though in exactly what form it’s hard to say.
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Realworld raises $3.4M to help Gen Z navigate adulthood
Realworld has a big vision — founder and CEO Genevieve Ryan Bellaire told me her goal is “simplifying adulthood.” And the New York startup has raised $3.4 million in seed funding to make it happen.
Apparently that’s something Bellaire struggled with herself in her early twenties. Despite being a lawyer with an MBA, she said she found herself “just totally unprepared for all these real-world things,” whether that was figuring out housing or heath insurance — something I (a non-lawyer, non-MBA) can definitely relate to.
“There’s tons of content out there out there that can tell you to fill out this form to sign up for a credit card, but you don’t know what you don’t know,” she said. “There’s not one place that defines adulthood.”
At the same time, there are online services that can make aspects of adulthood easier — whether that’s Lemonade for insurance, Betterment for investing or Zocdoc for doctor’s appointments. But again, finding these services and just knowing that you should use them can be a challenge, so Bellaire said Realworld is meant to serve as the “single point of entry.”
To do that, the startup has created more than 90 step-by-step playbooks, covering everything from budgeting to moving to salary negotiation. Bellaire said these are designed for members of Gen Z who are just leaving college and entering the workforce.
Realworld CEO Genevieve Ryan Bellaire. Image Credits: Realworld
Of course, even if you focus on a specific age group, different twentysomethings will have different backgrounds, income levels and challenges. Bellaire said the playbooks will customize their instructions based on a user’s specific goals and circumstances, but she also argued that Realworld’s “starter pack” of 15 playbooks covers things that every adult will need to deal with in some form, such as creating budgets, finding an apartment and understanding income taxes.
The startup plans to release its first mobile app next month, and its goal is to become what Bellaire described as a “platform, marketplace and community.” The playbooks are a big piece of the platform, and eventually, Realworld could also include a marketplace for services that will help you accomplish those adulthood goals, as well as a community where users share their knowledge and advice.
Realworld initially charged for access to its playbooks, but they’re now available for free. Instead, Bellaire said the company could charge a subscription fee for additional features and for “concierge-oriented support.”
“This is one of those problems where if you get it right, you can make a huge impact, but you can also have huge financial success,” she added.
It sounds like investors agree. Realworld had previously raised $1.1 million, and this new seed round was led by Fitz Gate Ventures, with participation from Bezos Expeditions (Jeff Bezos’ personal investment firm), Knightsgate Ventures, The Helm, Great Oaks VC, Copper Wire Ventures, AmplifyHer Ventures, Underdog Labs, Human Ventures and Techstars.
Amplifyher partner Meghan Cross Breeden noted that Realworld could “corner the market on life milestones,” not just for Gen Z right now, but for “every future milestone … in the long-haul of adulthood, from buying a home to caring for a parent.”
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