- Beacons, a business platform for social media creators, announced it raised $6 million in seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. These are the details.
Beacons — a business platform for social media creators — announced recently that it raised a $6 million seed funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Li Jin’s Atelier Ventures, The Chainsmokers’ Mantis Fund, Night Ventures, Brazilian e-sports organization LOUD, and Crush Music. And the new funding round will be used for accelerating product development and hiring.
Now Beacons supports over a quarter of a million creative brands with over 3,000 new accounts established daily. And creators and organizations using Beacons for link-in-bio include Sia, Russell Brand, Green Day, Katie Thurston (the next Bachelorette), and Barstool Sports.
As social platforms have enabled creators to reach large audiences, the ability to engage with and monetize audiences has been stifled by a first-generation design infrastructure that does not allow links and limits each user profile to a single URL.
And Beacons helps solves for these challenges by providing a robust mobile-first option that fosters stronger connections and enables purchases over social media platforms.
Beacons’ “link-in-bio” tool enables creators to build and customize a dedicated mobile landing page to include in profiles across social platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter. And its simple user interface and automated, personalized page setup offer both customizable theme generation and integration with existing content so creators and brands can quickly and easily direct followers to a single URL across multiple social platforms.
With the new funding round, the company plans to significantly expand its team in the next 12 months, hiring across engineering, operations, marketing and product design.
KEY QUOTES:
“Whether you’re an aspiring artist establishing a brand or an influencer growing your social following into a business, experience and engagement mean everything online. Today’s content creators and consumers have more sophisticated expectations than existing social platforms allow. Cookie cutter templates no longer work. Platforms need to allow for more artistic expression. With Beacons, creators can control their destiny by directing online traffic to a custom domain that looks awesome, is shareable and ultimately generates revenue.”
— Neal Jean, co-founder and CEO of Beacons
“Nearly half of workers age 35 and younger have a side hustle, with much of the revenue coming through social platforms. Beacons provides the foundational stack for these businesses, so creators can intentionally re-direct their following as needed and even scale brand new digital revenue streams such as tips, membership fees or social commerce.”
— Connie Chan, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz
