Social entertainment app MadLipz has announced it has raised more than $671,000 CAD in pre-seed funding from Plug and Play, Techstars, and a group of angel investors.
“The funding will allow us to take care of business as we move straight into raising for our seed round.”
The company, which has created a platform that allows users to create and share instant voiceovers, just completed Techstars Toronto’s 2019 class. With the new funding, the company said it plans to move straight into raising its seed round to help advance its product development capabilities.
“We have had a great experience at Techstars and are now happy to announce that we’ve reached our pre-seed goal ahead of Demo Day,” said Amir Alikhanzadeh, co-founder and CEO of MadLipz. “This pre-seed round has a good group of participants such as Plug and Play, Techstars and a very strong group of angel investors.”
Toronto-based MadLipz was first launched as a creation tool in 2016 by Alikhanzadeh, Amirali Afshar, and Shahed Doroudi, who all met while attending the University of Toronto. The platform allows users to create videos, called “lipz,” that are limited to 15 seconds. Sixty million lipz have been created in the app and approximately 200,000 lipz are created daily by its 40 million users. Its app is available on Android and iOS. The company added social features to the app last year. It was also one of the six startups selected for the fifth cohort of Ideaboost.
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Earlier this month, MadLipz integrated Kin cryptocurrency as a rewards mechanism in its app. Through the Kin integration, MadLipz users can earn, send, and receive Kin crypto within the app. The company also raised an undisclosed funding round from the Canadian Film Centre and a group of undisclosed New York City-based angel investors in August 2018.
The Techstars cohort is comprised of a range of companies, from crypto-investors to POS systems for customers on-the-go. Techstars Toronto has attracted talent from across Canada – as far as Nigeria and Lithuania. Launched in Canada in 2018, Techstars’ Toronto accelerator is run in partnership with Real Ventures. The program runs for 13 weeks out of WeWork in downtown Toronto.
Each year, Techstars chooses more than 300 companies to join its three-month mentorship-driven accelerators that operate around the world. Techstars invests $120,000 in each company for six percent common share equity, providing hands-on mentorship, and unlimited access to the Techstars global network.
Techstars will be hosting its Demo Day May 2.
Image courtesy MadLipz.