WhoSay Gets $12 Million Series C Led By Comcast Ventures For Its Celebrity-Centric Social Platform
WhoSay, an online media management platform for celebrities and other “influencers,” has raised $12 million in a new funding round led by Comcast Ventures.
The raise, which counts as WhoSay’s Series C, included participation from existing investors Greylock Partners, Amazon, and High Peaks Ventures; Chinese web giant Tencent also pitched in. This brings WhoSay’s total venture capital investment to $19.3 million, a company rep tells me.
WhoSay says it will put the new money toward the basics: Expanding in the US and abroad, and building out its technology. Today, WhoSay has 30 employees distributed between its headquarters in New York City and offices in Los Angeles and London.
WhoSay currently has more than 1000 members, who the company says are “high profile film, television, music, and sports personalities.” The platform lets celebrities share content through apps including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, and others, and directly manage communication with their fans.
The company was co-founded in 2010 by CEO Steve Ellis and the Creative Artist’s Agency (CAA), one of show business’ most renowned talent agencies.
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TidePool Raises $1.5 Million To Discover And Match Personalities From Photos
TidePool, a startup that is trying to determine consumer personality from photos, has raised $1.5 million in a seed round led by Mike Hirshland of Resolute.VC and Michael Dearing of Harrison Metal Capital. Participating investors include Jarl Mohn, Tim Draper, Peggy and Jim Davis, and Jeff Lipp.
The startup’s central goal is simple—Tidepool uses a proprietary technology to uncover personality and other psychological characteristics from photos. To begin your assessment on Tidepool, you are presented a number of photos. You are asked to rank photos by which ones you like best. You are also asked to pick between two images that you like, choose different interests (based on pictures) and more.
The startup’s founders, Kabir Sagoo and Dr. Galen Buckwalter (founding Chief Science Officer at eHarmony) tell me that they have developed 60 types of personalities including “maverick,” “producer,” “super sleuth,” “The different drummer,” and others bases on these image choices. You can then sign up with Facebook or LinkedIn and share with your friends.
While the startup simply offers a test and assessment at the moment, the startup wants to be use the technology to make suggestions of who you will get along with based on the personality assignment. Buckwalter and Sagoo admits that there isn’t a lot of conclusive data that validates if this technology is the best way to match personalities, but the startup is in the process of conducting a study to prove its anecdotal findings.
Sagoo explains, “Questionnaires are boring and easily gamed. TidePool brings imagination and creativity to testing…eventually your photos will become a lot more valuable to you when you use TidePool.”
The company is part of Los Angeles-based startup accelerator, Amplify.
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