Longworth Closes Series A Round in Scrapblog
March 27th, 2007 by Jason Yau
We’ve been hard at work here leading new investments in exciting early stage companies. Hot on the heels of Cellufun, we recently completed the Scrapblog Series A round of financing. My last post articulated our investment thesis about the disruptive potential of emerging Rich Internet Application (RIA) companies. We believe that Scrapblog will be one of these companies. Probably the easiest way to get a feel for the product is to watch a product demo (the product will be launching shortly).
The Scrapblog product is a free online multimedia scrapbooking design tool, which gives users the power to manipulate their photos and videos with more flexibility than any other tool today. The photo/video slideshow market is exploding, as companies like Slide and RockYou have demonstrated. However, Scrapblog is particularly exciting, because it offers its users significant customization and flexibility while remaining drag & drop easy. Scrapblog is very appealing to a broad segment of the market that is interested in a tool that gives them more flexibility than a choice of several presets and generic templates.
Scrapblog appeals to teen/college users, as well as users that have not been well served by today’s slideshow tools. Those tools narrowly cater their flashy effects to the Myspace crowd. However, pet owners, photographers, newly married couples, and mothers are just some of the groups that are frustrated by tools like Slide that don’t let them really express themselves. Our investment thesis rests on the premise that although the market is already huge, today’s players haven’t even begun to scratch the surface.
Overall, we believe that the Scrapblog team has done an impressive job of building a complete design application, instead of a 3-step process. The success of Myspace over Friendster and custom YouTube montages suggests that teenagers (who can’t even be bothered to wash the dishes and take out the trash) prefer elaborate customization as a key element of self expression, even if it means more work.
Meanwhile, I wrote in my last post that technology alone is not enough to compete effectively in this fast-track development market, and Scrapblog is no exception. Many people (myself included) don’t know the first thing about design principles, so a team of developers has been working hard to create a rich library of stickers, backgrounds, and other elements oriented around various themes to jumpstart the creative process. The quality of this content is a prime differentiator that sets the company apart from the pack.
Carlos and the team have done a great job of dedicating themselves to improving the design online user experience, and we’re excited to be working with them.
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[…] Scrapblog, the first web-based service for creating and sharing multimedia scrapbooks has now goes live, after two years of planning and development. In addition, another great news for them is that they also secured a funding from Longworth Venture Partners for an undisclosed amount in a round A financing, but some industry pundits are predicted Scrapblog is seeking for $2.5 million, according to this article. […]