Santa Monica, California-based Mammoth Media, creator of storytelling app Yarn, has secured $13 million in Series A funding. Greylock Partners led the round.
PRESS RELEASE
LOS ANGELES, CA., January 30, 2018 — Today, Mammoth Media, the first studio lot building entertainment experiences for the mobile-first generation, announced that it has closed its Series A venture funding of $13MM led by Greylock Partners and including Science, Inc. This funding will allow Mammoth to continue to invest in technological innovation, as well as maintain its focus on creating experiences that entertain and engage people in a modern way, on the device they interact with the most — their phone.
Mammoth Media is the only mobile-first company to produce, distribute, acquire audiences and monetize original short-form content across its family of apps. Its collection and utilization of data empowers Mammoth to understand viewer behavior, test different production formats and rapidly scale, allowing Mammoth to quickly create and launch unique content that keeps viewers entertained.
Additionally, on Friday, the company debuted HACK’D, an original series from writers of the horror franchise Saw on Yarn, Mammoth’s Innovative micro-storytelling platform with stories delivered as tap-to-display text messages. Starring top Musical.ly influencer, Kristen Hancher, the multi-episode series follows an unstable hacker with a god-like complex, who goes by the online alias of HUBRIS, as he hijacks the up-and-coming social media starlet’s (Hancher) livestream in an attempt to shame her in front of her legion of loyal followers.
“Consumer behavior is changing rapidly and dramatically – people want to read micro-stories and be micro-entertained throughout their day so this funding enables us to continue to adapt to those changes and, in turn, produce fully engaging entertainment experiences in the format that people want most,” said Benoit Vatere, CEO and co-founder of Mammoth Media. “HACK’D will be our first series told exclusively through interactive video, and this latest innovation in format on Yarn allows studios and content creators/owners to drive new fans to existing IP through our Mammoth properties.”
Mammoth Media is defining a new category in storytelling and entertainment for the always-on consumer. In addition to Yarn, the company also runs the tap-to-vote social networking app Wishbone. The apps have captured hearts and minds of Millennials and Generation Z with both consistently ranked in the Top 100 App charts in the United States. Since its launch last year, Yarn has become a dominant destination for short-form storytelling with a total of 36 million stories read, 1.6 million episodes read per week and 7.5 billion messages read to date. Users spend 66,000 hours / week reading stories with the average subscriber reading 50 minutes in their first week. On Wishbone, a total of 74 million cards have been created. The app has an average of 352 million votes per month and a total of 17 billion votes to date, reaching 2M teen girls (12-16) every month.
“Mammoth Media is defining this new generation of mobile media,” said Josh Elman from Greylock Partners who has also joined Mammoth’s board of directors. “It doesn’t look like books, TV, or movies, it is something different. This new form of media is mobile first, where users touch and interact with the content as they experience it. I am excited to partner with Benoit and the Mammoth Media team as they are uniquely positioned to build and scale this next-gen media company.”
Mike Jones, co-founder & CEO of Science Inc. added, “Mammoth is leading in Millennial and Generation Z mobile content and entertainment, and Yarn has become the Netflix for these generations. With their pioneering new ultra-short form premium content format, I expect their reach to only grow.”
With creative partners and brands such as L’Oréal, Dunkin’ Donuts, M2, Crypt TV and Vertical Networks, the company is also pleased to announce its partnership with Skype to create three storylines that highlight Skype’s communication features in Yarn. The first, ‘Mom’s Secret’ premiered late last year, with ‘Still Searching’ debuted last week. The third original franchise will premiere in the next few months.
“This partnership with Mammoth allows Skype to deliver new and interesting consumer experiences to engage with Skype in a popular new storytelling medium enjoyed by a broad range of audiences.” said Steven Abrahams, GPM Product Partnerships at Skype.
The company also has projects in the works, to be announced soon, with Danny Trejo.
ABOUT MAMMOTH MEDIA
Mammoth Media is the first studio lot building entertainment experiences for the mobile-first generation. Mammoth is the first to produce, distribute, and monetize original entertainment apps for the moments of micro-boredom in daily life, and in doing so, delivers revenue, brand value and data-driven insights to content owners and advertisers.
Mammoth is the studio behind Yarn, the disruptive micro-storytelling platform that presents narrative through click-through text messages (7.5 billion read to date) and Wishbone, the tap-to-vote social networking app (17.6 billion votes thus far). Both apps are consistently ranked in the Top 100 App charts in the United States and has collectively touched more than 30% of United States Generation Z and Millennials every month. Mammoth started with Yarn and Wishbone, and will continue to launch innovative mobile-first properties in service of our mission.
Mammoth Media is headquartered in Santa Monica, CA. Investors include Greylock Partners and Science, Inc.
ABOUT SKYPE
Skype has been enabling the world’s conversations for more than 10 years. Skype is for doing things together, whenever you’re apart. Skype’s text, voice and video make it simple to share experiences with the people that matter to you, wherever they are. Skype is available in 34 languages and is one of the fastest growing voice communications offerings worldwide, with users spending as many as 3 billion minutes on Skype in a single day. Visit www.skype.com for more details.
If you do not receive this within five minutes, please try and sign in again. If the problem persists, please
email: