TAKKLE which is a social network for high schoolers has announced that today the company has received Series A funding from several venture capitalists. Some of the investors include Greycroft Partners LLC, WMG Investments, IJ Smith Enterprises LLC, and Jack Schneider, who is a Manager Director at Allen & Company Inc.
“Given our sports-crazed national culture and the explosive growth in social networking, we built TAKKLE to enable amateur athletes and fans to connect via their passion for sports,” stated David Birnbaum, the CEO and founder of TAKKLE Inc. “With this financing from strategic partners, we are now poised to build on our early success and grow TAKKLE to its full potential.”
TAKKLE is the first and only social network that focuses on high school sports thus far and hopefully the last. I say this only because I played sports in high school and this is not the type of social network that I see myself belonging to, but I am always willing to try new things. However, I do give TAKKLE credit for being original and providing modern technology for a market that has never been chased after. TAKKLE will allow users to upload photos, videos, statistics, and create player and team profiles. Not even ESPN offers such a service for high schoolers and that could be a winning point for TAKKLE.
Wasserman Media Group, one of TAKKLE’s investors stated that the investment firm would do what they can to support TAKKLE. Wasserman has direct experience in the sports management industry and is planning on providing brand visibility for TAKKLE. “We are initially targeting the high school market but will soon grow the TAKKLE network to encompass all amateur athletics – intramural, club, office league, youth, and fantasy – and create uniquely targeted marketing opportunities for our partners and sponsors,” Birnbaum added.
If you are a user of TAKKLE, make sure to root for the Ann Arbor Huron River Rats sports teams in their profiles (if they have one). That’s right, the former high school of myself and fellow Pulse 2.0 bloggers, Mo Kakwan and Shan Sadiq, was built on a landfill next to the property of the University of Michigan, thus we are the River Rats and proud of it.
