- Holler announced that it has raised $36 million in Series B funding. These are the details.
Holler, a conversational media company that is focused on the creation and delivery of content that helps peer-to-peer messages be more engaging and effective, recently announced that it has raised $36 million in Series B funding. This round of funding was co-led by CityRock Venture Partners and New General Market Partners LLC (founded by billionaire entrepreneur Richelieu Dennis). And additional investors in the round include Gaingels, Interplay Ventures, Relevance Ventures, Towerview Ventures, and WorldQuant Ventures.
This investment is going to help the company continue to enhance digital messaging experiences and accelerate the development of its conversational media products, and a new model of advertising that directly and organically connects brands with consumers within peer-to-peer messaging environments.
Holler plans to use the latest funding round to invest in the research, engineering, and development around conversational media, and the original creative content intended to drive its use. And Holler’s sophisticated Suggestion AI Technology is now capable of more accurately understanding context and nuance in messaging, leading to better content suggestions, and improved conversations.
This technology is being adopted by major platform partners via Holler Kit 5, the company’s latest SDK. And with Holler Kit 5, developers can seamlessly bring engaging content and features such as GIFs, stickers and advanced Suggestion AI Technology into their platform – all with one integration. Most recently, The Meet Group (a portfolio of popular dating apps) updated its platform with this technology and a strong pipeline of new partners are lined up to integrate Holler Kit 5 throughout the next three quarters.
The brand and advertising community has taken note of the opportunities within messaging. And last year, Holler launched new conversational media campaigns on behalf of industry leaders including HBO Max, Orbit, and Vita Coco. And major corporations like AB InBev, Diageo, IKEA, Mars, Molson Coors, and Starbucks have scaled their programs on Holler’s platform after successful trials. A suite of Molson Coors brands— including Vizzy, Blue Moon, Coors Light, and Miller Light— achieved significant levels of reach with their campaigns.
Last year was Holler’s first revenue growth year, and revenue booked in Q1 2021 has already hit 226% of total revenue in 2020 and remains on a positive growth trajectory. Plus the company is bullish on the continued importance of messaging as a communication tool, and believes that stickers, GIFs, and other content within messaging is only the beginning.
KEY QUOTES:
“Having meaningful conversations online is more important now than ever. We knew that conversational media would be essential to everyday life so we’ve spent the last few years finessing our technology and building the foundation to take advantage of the moment when the market was ready to embrace it on a broader scale. In 2020, that work has started to pay dividends as the influence and potential of conversational media gained momentum with both investors and brands.”
— Travis Montaque, CEO and Founder of Holler
“Holler is more than simply a groundbreaking technology company. Under Travis Montaque’s visionary leadership, Holler boldly stands for a new era of ethics in social media, and also deeply reflects the values of diversity, inclusion, and belonging. Along with what we believe is huge market potential, this is why Holler aligns so strongly with CityRock’s purpose-driven investment strategy. Our team is honored to be a part of Holler’s extraordinary journey.”
— Oliver Libby, co-founder and Managing Partner of CityRock Venture Partners
