INFLUENCE – a platform re-envisioning venture investing – recently announced the closing of a US$20.8 million seed round led by Alpha Praetorian Capital (APC), a multi-stage institutional venture capital fund. INFLUENCE offers a new form of venture capital by using AI-based tech to transform traditional and social media into an investable medium called INFLUENCE. The notable investors in INFLUENCE include The London Fund, ACME Innovation, Reeve Collins (co-founder of Tether), Al Kahn (Pokémon), and other prominent tech founders and investors.
APC’s significant funding round highlights the rising sentiment that venture capital investing needs to evolve, endorsing INFLUENCE’s novel approach to creating scalable media-for-equity funds. And INFLUENCE’s technology powers The London Fund’s initial US $250 million creator domain by transforming the audience of +200 power influencers (those with over 1 million social media followers) into advertising inventory. The inventory of over 100 billion potential impressions is invested into visionary founders and high-growth B2B2C and B2C companies, enabling influencers to become owners. They become investor-creators.
The London Fund has invested millions of dollars across various companies, including Hulah, Elo Health, Beatchain, Price.com, Honeydrop, and Dollar Donation Club. The London Fund expects to use INFLUENCE tech to create global domains targeting US $500 million by the end of 2024.
By layering in a persona-based targeting system, INFLUENCE’s AI coordinates investor-creator-led conversations to best sequence their branded posts, likes, and comments to create the most resonating and viral marketing. This forms a new type of media channel, ECHO CHAMBER. This approach allows investor creators to engage their audience with conversational authenticity, moving away from disingenuous promotional content while preserving brand integrity.
INFLUENCE will help funds scale operations through its tech by simplifying portfolio management, LP communication, and regulatory compliance.
KEY QUOTES:
“APC is excited to lead this investment round in INFLUENCE. We believe our investment will help accelerate their expansion, bridging the worlds of media marketing and equity investment through a coordinated vector. We see this as a fundamental shift in venture investing where operational services can directly and efficiently impact a company’s growth. INFLUENCE is set to redefine the landscape.”
- Quentin Reyes, Managing Director at Alpha Praetorian Capital
“Since closing our INFLUENCE-for-equity deal with The London Fund in March, we have gone from 0 to 160,000 users using the ECHO CHAMBER. They truly get in the trenches with their founders. As entrepreneurs themselves, they are more than marketing, they are like my extended team – ideating on products, navigating corporate complexities, and even debugging tech. They are partners, not investors.”
- Heather Hopkins, Founder and CEO of the viral dating app Hulah (hulah.co)
“The partnership with APC will fuel the next phase of our growth as we look to expand beyond social media. With startups raising trillions of dollars to pay for services like marketing and cloud computing, INFLUENCE creates an opportunity to remove the middle man by investing services directly into companies.”
- Ashesh Shah, Founder and CEO of INFLUENCE
