Tag: The Chernin Group

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Stoggles thinks protective eyewear can be fashionable, too

We wear sunglasses to keep the sun out of our eyes, but they have always been a piece of fashion. Stoggles co-founders Max Greenberg and Rahul Khatri think the fashion label should also apply to protective eyewear.

Both were working together at another fashion eyewear company when the global pandemic hit. Seeing how saturated the market was, they saw an opportunity to make protective eyewear a similar and sexy space, initially targeting the healthcare industry. Stoggles’ glasses combine ANSI-Z87-certified protection with style and comfort, have a prescription lens option and offer blue-light-blocking technology and a proprietary anti-fog coating.

“This has been a way more rewarding business because our biggest customer is healthcare professionals,” Greenberg told TechCrunch. “And they were going from wearing these really bulky, uncomfortable, ugly, protective glasses to having something that they wanted to show off, wanted to post about on Instagram, share with their friends and talk about how it makes a bigger impact on their daily lives, both functionally and in general happiness and well-being.”

They kicked off Los Angeles-based Stoggles in August 2020 with a crowdfunding campaign and then launched an e-commerce website in February 2021. From there, Greenberg said the company “saw incredible growth last year,” averaging about 30% in revenue growth month over month.

The global protective eyewear market is poised to reach $3.1 billion industry by 2026, and even other companies are working to make glasses more hip, though more on the consumer side, including Pair Eyewear, Cheeterz Club and the one that started it all — Warby Parker, which made its public debut via direct listing in September.

Despite already being profitable and their line of eyewear hitting it off with the healthcare community, the Stoggles founders decided to go after their first round of venture capital after bootstrapping the company. Greenberg said that due to the company already establishing product-market fit, rather than go with a traditional Series A, they went with a growth round, raising $40 million from The Chernin Group.

One of the company’s goals is to get into more content and media to raise awareness about Stoggles, and the founders thought The Chernin Group would be a good partner for that, having experience in content and media companies, he added.

Luke Beatty, partner at TCG, said in a written statement that not only did Stoggles find and prove out a huge gap in the protective eyewear market, but they filled it — “a feat we found rather impressive for a company of their age,” he added. “Max and Rahul have expertly built an exceptional business model and we’re thrilled to be a partner in this next stage of growth.”

The company will use the new funding to invest in product development to expand its line of goggles and continue offering more products in the healthcare market. It is also poised to go beyond that market into others, like construction, laboratory sciences, home improvement and do-it-yourself, Greenberg said. In addition, Stoggles will be building out its leadership team, looking to add a marketing director.

The company has 15 employees and wants to double that by the end of the year.

“We really want to build a strong foundation of great, really passionate people that see the mission that we’re after, and want to help us achieve and be a part of it,” Greenberg added. “We couldn’t have gotten here without our healthcare customers, so we want to make sure we build an even better product for them, continue to improve, continue to grow the product line and get the word out and make the experience better.”

Warby Parker makes it clear that direct listings are unicorn-friendly

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Web3 ‘Proof of attendance’ startup raises $10M to mint shared memories as NFTs

If blockchains are immutable records of our digital history, what kinds of history do we want to inscribe on them? Predictably, most records thus far have been transaction data, but as entrepreneurs expand their ambitions for NFTs, startups are aiming to tie those asset transactions to real world events and interactions.

POAP, which stands for Proof Of Attendance Protocol, wants to dial deeper into the idea of using NFT’s to create internet communities, with a protocol that helps build more active communities and award individual participation like taking part in an event. POAP is organized around badges as the visual signifier of their protocol. In the real world, a user could scan a QR code to received an NFT memento that could unlock admission to an online community and earn them future drops.

Plenty of this functionality exists elsewhere across Ethereum projects made possible by some of the underlying features of the blockchain which allows developers to create “snapshots” of active wallets which have been linked to the project at a given time. The POAP ecosystem also includes a number of other tools including Etheruem-backed polling, raffle contest mechanics and private chat verification tech.

The startup announced this week that they’ve raised a $10 million Seed round led by Archetype and Sapphire Sport with additional participation in the funding from Sound Ventures, The Chernin Group and Advancit Capital. A host of crypto native funds also invested including Collab Currency, 1KX, Libertus Capital, Red Beard Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, Delphi Digital and A Capital.

POAP met some challenges in 2021 as NFT community growth accelerated and the number of people looking to tap into their platform created an overwhelming influx of spam that brought the platform to a crawl. In a blog post, the company says it plans to use its new funding to invest in its application and platform layers.

Tom Brady’s buzzy celebrity NFT startup Autograph banks $170M from Silicon Valley’s top crypto investors

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Fitness ring maker Oura raises $100M

It’s been a wild couple of years for Oura. Last year, in particular, proved to be a major driver for the wearable fitness manufacturer. With the pandemic bringing professional sports to a screeching halt in 2020, a number of major leagues have adopted the ring, including the NBA, WNBA, UFC and NASCAR.

The company has also been making a major push into health research courtesy of UCSF, which has published peer-review studies around the ring’s temperature monitor. That feature in particular has made it a big draw for the aforementioned leagues, as temperature spikes could point to larger issues, including the early stages of COVID-19.

Today the company is announcing a $100 million Series C. The round, led by The Chernin Group and Elysian Park (the Dodgers’ investment arm), brings the wearable company’s total funding up to $148.3 million. New investors include Temasek, JAZZ Venture Partners and Eisai, joining existing investors Forerunner Ventures, Square, MSD Capital, Marc Benioff, Lifeline Ventures, Metaplanet Holdings and Next Ventures.

Oura raises $28 million for its health and sleep tracking ring

The company initially set itself apart with its form factor, joining a crowded field that largely revolved around the wrist. Clearly, however, it’s come into its own over the last few years.

“The wearables industry is transitioning from activity trackers to health platforms that can improve people’s lives,” CEO Harpreet Singh Rai said in a press release tied to the news. “Oura focused first on sleep because it’s a daily habit, and lack of sleep has been linked to worsening health conditions including diabetes, cardiac disease, Alzheimer’s, cancer, poor mental health, and more.”

The company says the round will go toward R&D (both hardware and software development) and hiring, including additional marketing and customer experience. The round also sees the hiring of a number of key roles, including head of Science, Shyamal Patel; site leader Tommi Heinonen and Daniel Welch, who has been promoted to CFO.

“This year has shined a spotlight on gaps in our healthcare industry, and the increasing need for each of us to take control over our own health,” Forerunner Managing Director Eurie Kim said in the release. “Oura is emerging as the trusted leader and community in the space by empowering people with personalized data that provides actionable insights for health improvement.”

The Oura Ring is the personal health tracking device to beat in 2020

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NBA Top Shot maker Dapper Labs is now worth $2.6 billion thanks to half of Hollywood, the NBA, and Michael Jordan

From the early success of Crypto Kitties to the explosive growth of NBA Top Shot, Dapper Labs has been at the forefront of the cryptocurrency collectible craze known as NFTs.

Now the company is reaping the benefits of its trailblazing status with a new $305 million financing led by some of the biggest names in Hollywood, sports, and investing.

The new round values the company at a whopping $2.6 billion, according to multiple media reports, and comes at a time when NFTs have captured the popular imagination.

Leading the company’s financing was Coatue, the financial services firm that’s behind many of the biggest later stage tech deals. But heavy hitters from the entertainment world also took their cut — these are folks like NBA legend Michael Jordan as well as current players and funds including Kevin Durant, Andre Iguodala, Kyle Lowry, Spencer Dinwiddie, Andre Drummond, Alex Caruso, Michael Carter-Williams, Josh Hart, Udonis Haslem, JaVale McGee, Khris Middleton, Domantas Sabonis, Klay Thompson, Nikola Vucevic, Thad Young, and Richard Seymour’s 93 Ventures.

Entertainment and music heavyweights including Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures, Will Smith and Keisuke Honda’s Dreamers VC, Shawn Mendes and Andrew Gertler’s AG Ventures, Shay Mitchell, and 2 Chainz also bought in on the action.

And from the venture world comes other strategic investors like Andreessen Horowitz, The Chernin Group, USV, Version One, and Venrock.

The company said it would use the funds to continue building out NBA Top Shot and expanding the updated digital trading card platform to other sports and a broader creator community.

Top Shot has already notched over $500 million in sales for its animated trading cards featuring things like LeBron James dunking and the sky (at least for now) is seemingly the limit for the collectible applications of blockchain.

It’s like the one thing that cryptocurrency can do really well and it’s been embraced far beyond the world of sports collectibles. The recent $69 million sale of a digital piece of art at Christies also marks a watershed moment for art world.

Beeple’s $69 million NFT sale marks a potentially transformative moment for the art world

“NBA Top Shot is successful because it taps into basketball fandom – it’s a new and more exciting way for people to connect with their favorite teams and players,” said Roham Gharegozlou, CEO of Dapper Labs. “We want to bring the same magic to other sports leagues as well as help other entertainment studios and independent creators find their own approaches in exploring open platforms. NFTs unlock a new model for monetization that benefits the fans much more than advertising or sponsorships.”

Powering the Top Shot system and Dapper Labs’ other offerings is a new blockchain protocol called Flow, which purports to handle mainstream consumer applications at scale, and can support mass adoption.

Flow also allows for transactions using fiat currency and credit cards in addition to provide a much needed ease of cryptocurrency, and can keep customers safe from the fraud or theft common in cryptocurrency systems, according to a statement from Dapper Labs.

The NFT market is just getting started, but where is it headed?

Flow enables NFT marketplaces and other decentralized applications that need to scale to handle mainstream demand without extremely high transaction costs (“gas fees”) or environmental concerns, the company said.

“NBA Top Shot is one of the best demonstrations we’ve seen of how quickly new technology can change the landscape for media and sports fans,” said Kevin Durant, Co-Founder of Thirty Five Ventures. “We’re excited to follow the progress with everything happening on Flow blockchain and use our platform with the Boardroom to connect with fans in a new way.”

Already companies like Warner Music Group, Ubisoft, Warner Media, and the UFC, as well as thousands of third party developers, artists, and other creators are using the Flow mainnet to sell collectible cards, and develop custodial wallets.

Additional investors in the round include: MLB players like Tim Beckham and Nolan Arenado; NFL players: Ken Crawley, Thomas Davis, Stefon Diggs, Dee Ford, Malcom Jenkins, Rodney McLeod, Jordan Matthew, Devin McCourty, Jason McCourty, DK Metcalf, Tyrod Taylor, and Trent Williams; team ownership including Vivek Ranadive (Kings), and notable sports investors Bolt Ventures.

NFTs could bridge video games and the fashion industry

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Sketchy wants to replace boring textbooks with ‘Pixar-like’ videos

Studying for med school is tough. What if it was more Pixar-like?

Sketchy, a visual learning platform, takes complex material that a med student might need to memorize for an exam, and puts the information in an illustrated scene. For example, it uses a countryside kingdom to explain the coronavirus, or a salmon dinner to explain Salmonella. The goal is for a student to be able to mentally go back to the scene while taking an exam, walk through it and retrieve all of the information.

While Sketchy’s strategy might seem odd, it’s actually well-known. The “memory palace” technique matches objects to concepts for easier memorization. So far, Sketchy has more than 30,000 paid subscribers and is on track to hit $7 million in revenue this year.

To charge this growth and break into new content verticals, Sketchy is taking venture capital on for the first time in its seven-year history. Last month, the team announced that it has raised a $30 million Series A led by The Chernin Group (TCG). Today, it tacks on $2 million to that total with financing from co-investor Reach Capital. It’s a big combined investment for a company that has been bootstrapping since birth — and the deal could help us see where online education is heading.

Edtech investors are panning for gold

The capital comes as Sketchy itself looks to grow past a content service for med students, and into an education platform tackling information in critical fields, from legal to nursing. With the new money, Sketchy plans to build an in-house animation studio and hire more artists and doctors, some of whom are currently consultants.

The story

A big part of Sketchy’s magic, and effectiveness, comes from the fact that all of its founding team have experience in medicine.

The company began in 2013 when then-med students Saud Siddiqui and Andrew Berg were in desperate need of a better study solution for microbiology. To liven up their studying, Berg and Siddiqui began weaving characters into stories to try to memorize concepts — and after a few good test scores, they started creating stories for their classmates.

“Neither Sid or I were artists, so they were pretty bad,” Berg said. As demand continued, the duo put their scraggly sketches on YouTube. Eventually, Siddiqui and Berg roped in classmate Bryan Lemieux, a good artist, to tell the stories with them. Eventually Bryan brought on his twin brother, Aaron, and the founding team was born.

Fast-forward to today: Siddiqui and Berg have finished their residencies in emergency medicine, while the Lemieux brothers chose to leave medicine. All have moved full-time to the company after trying to balance both jobs. Still, the knowledge from working in the field continues to be useful.

The startup’s name has evolved: born as SketchyMedical, it has since rebranded to just Sketchy. While the team chose the name to nod toward its focus on art, the name also has negative connotations. Expect a rebrand in the future.

Despite this, the company claims that it is used by a third of med students in the United States. The majority of its revenues come from 12-month subscriptions for students looking to prep for med school exams like Step 1, and Step 2.

While B2C is a promising business model for many reasons (it’s always easier to convince a human to pay instead of a entire, red-tape-bound institution), the company has also posted promising B2B growth. So far, 20% of its revenue comes from direct contracts it has with medical schools. The founders said that they will pursue both growth methods for now, but based on the price of med school (and student debt crisis), it would be great to see them grow through school contracts so students don’t have to face the brunt of costs.

Beyond the coronavirus

Reach Capital’s Jennifer Carolan, an investor in Sketchy, said that Sketchy’s product market fit with med students is a “strong signal that their content is worth it.” Even with competitors such as Picorize and Medcomic, she’s confident that Sketchy’s product is defensible and can expand into new verticals. Part of the reason the firm approached Sketchy to invest in them is because of low customer acquisition costs, Carolan notes in a blog post. 

That said, unlike most edtech companies, which have enjoyed surging new user demand thanks to remote learning, Sketchy didn’t have a huge COVID-19 boom.

“We weren’t one of those people that hadn’t found product market fit and then exploded after COVID,” said Berg. “We’ve always been there and been growing.”

So the real trigger for today’s fundraise wasn’t COVID-19 momentum, but instead, a push to capitalize its sustained growth into more digital curriculum verticals.

Long-term, think of Sketchy as joining a chorus of startups, including Top Hat Jr and Newsela, that want to replace textbook publishers. In a remote world, live, moving content is more rapidly losing value, and upstarts are trying to replace them with more effective and engaging content.

“One of the challenges is just to make sure we don’t go too fast,” Siddiqui said. “We want to keep that degree of quality we’ve maintained for so many years, and do it at scale.”

Equity Dive: Edtech’s 2020 wakeup call

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Sketchy wants to replace boring textbooks with ‘Pixar-like’ videos

Studying for med school is tough. What if it was more Pixar-like?

Sketchy, a visual learning platform, takes complex material that a med student might need to memorize for an exam, and puts the information in an illustrated scene. For example, it uses a countryside kingdom to explain the coronavirus, or a salmon dinner to explain Salmonella. The goal is for a student to be able to mentally go back to the scene while taking an exam, walk through it and retrieve all of the information.

While Sketchy’s strategy might seem odd, it’s actually well-known. The “memory palace” technique matches objects to concepts for easier memorization. So far, Sketchy has more than 30,000 paid subscribers and is on track to hit $7 million in revenue this year.

To charge this growth and break into new content verticals, Sketchy is taking venture capital on for the first time in its seven-year history. Last month, the team announced that it has raised a $30 million Series A led by The Chernin Group (TCG). Today, it tacks on $2 million to that total with financing from co-investor Reach Capital. It’s a big combined investment for a company that has been bootstrapping since birth — and the deal could help us see where online education is heading.

Edtech investors are panning for gold

The capital comes as Sketchy itself looks to grow past a content service for med students, and into an education platform tackling information in critical fields, from legal to nursing. With the new money, Sketchy plans to build an in-house animation studio and hire more artists and doctors, some of whom are currently consultants.

The story

A big part of Sketchy’s magic, and effectiveness, comes from the fact that all of its founding team have experience in medicine.

The company began in 2013 when then-med students Saud Siddiqui and Andrew Berg were in desperate need of a better study solution for microbiology. To liven up their studying, Berg and Siddiqui began weaving characters into stories to try to memorize concepts — and after a few good test scores, they started creating stories for their classmates.

“Neither Sid or I were artists, so they were pretty bad,” Berg said. As demand continued, the duo put their scraggly sketches on YouTube. Eventually, Siddiqui and Berg roped in classmate Bryan Lemieux, a good artist, to tell the stories with them. Eventually Bryan brought on his twin brother, Aaron, and the founding team was born.

Fast-forward to today: Siddiqui and Berg have finished their residencies in emergency medicine, while the Lemieux brothers chose to leave medicine. All have moved full-time to the company after trying to balance both jobs. Still, the knowledge from working in the field continues to be useful.

The startup’s name has evolved: born as SketchyMedical, it has since rebranded to just Sketchy. While the team chose the name to nod toward its focus on art, the name also has negative connotations. Expect a rebrand in the future.

Despite this, the company claims that it is used by a third of med students in the United States. The majority of its revenues come from 12-month subscriptions for students looking to prep for med school exams like Step 1, and Step 2.

While B2C is a promising business model for many reasons (it’s always easier to convince a human to pay instead of a entire, red-tape-bound institution), the company has also posted promising B2B growth. So far, 20% of its revenue comes from direct contracts it has with medical schools. The founders said that they will pursue both growth methods for now, but based on the price of med school (and student debt crisis), it would be great to see them grow through school contracts so students don’t have to face the brunt of costs.

Beyond the coronavirus

Reach Capital’s Jennifer Carolan, an investor in Sketchy, said that Sketchy’s product market fit with med students is a “strong signal that their content is worth it.” Even with competitors such as Picorize and Medcomic, she’s confident that Sketchy’s product is defensible and can expand into new verticals. Part of the reason the firm approached Sketchy to invest in them is because of low customer acquisition costs, Carolan notes in a blog post. 

That said, unlike most edtech companies, which have enjoyed surging new user demand thanks to remote learning, Sketchy didn’t have a huge COVID-19 boom.

“We weren’t one of those people that hadn’t found product market fit and then exploded after COVID,” said Berg. “We’ve always been there and been growing.”

So the real trigger for today’s fundraise wasn’t COVID-19 momentum, but instead, a push to capitalize its sustained growth into more digital curriculum verticals.

Long-term, think of Sketchy as joining a chorus of startups, including Top Hat Jr and Newsela, that want to replace textbook publishers. In a remote world, live, moving content is more rapidly losing value, and upstarts are trying to replace them with more effective and engaging content.

“One of the challenges is just to make sure we don’t go too fast,” Siddiqui said. “We want to keep that degree of quality we’ve maintained for so many years, and do it at scale.”

Equity Dive: Edtech’s 2020 wakeup call

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Digital elective care and telemedicine provider Ro raises $200 million at a reported $1.5 billion valuation

In three years Zachariah Reitano’s startup, Ro, has managed to hit a reported $1.5 billion valuation for its transformation from a company focused on treating erectile disfunction to a telemedicine service for a range of elective and urgent care-focused treatments.

Through Rory for women’s health, Roman for men’s health, and Zero for smoking cessation, Reitano’s company now treats 20 conditions including sexual health, weight loss, dermatology, allergies and more, according to a statement from the company.

Image Credit: Zero

Ro also has a new pharmacy business, Ro Pharmacy, which is an online cash pay pharmacy offering over 500 generic medications for just $5 per month per drug. And the company is getting into the weight loss business through a partnership with the private equity-backed health care company, Gelesis.

Ro’s also becoming a gateway into patient acquisition for primary care providers through Ribbon Health, and a test-case for the use of Pfizer’s Greenstone service, which provides certification that a generic drug is validated by one of the major pharmaceuticals.

The company’s $1.5 billion valuation is courtesy of a new $200 million investment from existing investors led by General Catalyst and including FirstMark Capital, Torch, SignalFire, TQ Ventures, Initialized Capital, 3L, and BoxGroup. New first time investor The Chernin Group also participated. In all, Ro has raised $376 million since it launched in 2017.

“This new investment will further our mission to become every patient’s first call. We’ll continue to invest in our vertically-integrated healthcare ecosystem, from our Collaborative Care Center to our national pharmacy operating system. This is just the beginning of Ro’s patient-centered healthcare platform.” 

It’s all part of the company’s mission to provide a point of entry into the healthcare system independent of insurance qualifications.

“Telehealth companies like Ro are using technology to address long-standing healthcare disparities that have been exacerbated by Covid-19,” said Dr. Joycelyn Elders, MD, Ro Medical Advisor and Former US Surgeon General. “By empowering providers to leverage their skills as efficiently and effectively as possible, Ro delivers affordable, high-quality care regardless of a patient’s location, insurance status, or physical access to physicians and pharmacies.”

Ro’s new financing is one of several forays by tech investors into reshaping the healthcare system at a time when patient care has been severely disrupted by attempts to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

Digital medicine is assuming a central position in the healthcare world with most consultations now occurring online. Reimbursement schemes for telemedicine have changed dramatically and investors see an opportunity to capitalize on these changes by aggressively backing the expansion plans of companies looking to bring digital healthcare directly to consumers.

That’s one of the reasons why Ro’s major competitor, Hims, is reported to be seeking access to public markets through its sale to a Special Purpose Acquisition Company for roughly $1 billion, according to Reuters.

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Colin Kaepernick joins Medium board of directors and inks partnership publishing deal

The online publishing platform Medium said that it has added former San Francisco 49ers quarterback and civil rights advocate Colin Kaepernick to its board of directors.

The company also said it had inked a partnership agreement with Kaepernick to develop projects focused on race and civil rights in America under the Kaepernick Publishing imprint — Kaepernick’s personal publishing company founded in 2019.

Medium’s decision to bring Kaepernick on board as a director and publisher for the site follows an industry-wide reckoning within startups around the country about their role in perpetuating racial disparity in America. The accounting comes as protests in cities across the country shine a spotlight on police brutality and the political and economic disenfranchisement of the nation’s Black communities in the wake of the Memorial Day murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers.

According to Medium’s chief executive Ev Williams, the deal with Kaepernick is the culmination of a long-running discussion between the company and the athlete and activist.

“We’ve been in talks with Colin for some time, and we are honored to be electing him to join our board,” said Williams, in a statement. “Colin’s voice and actions have led the discussion on racial justice, and the world is finally catching up to him.”

Kaepernick will be writing stories and working on features for Medium’s Level, which describes itself as a publication for the “interested man” and its new blog on anti-Black racism and civil rights, Momentum. The activist and former quarterback will also interview leaders, activists and athletes for the Medium platform.

“I am excited for Kaepernick Publishing to partner with Medium to continue to elevate Black voices in the news and publishing industry,” said Kaepernick, in a statement. “I also look forward to creating new opportunities and avenues for Black writers and creators with my new role as a Board member.”

Medium currently boasts 170 million monthly readers across its blogs and editorially driven publications including ZORA and Level, which are aimed at women and men of color, according to the company. Medium also publishes GEN, focused on “politics, power, and culture”; the technology-focused masthead, OneZero; Elemental, a health-focused site; Forge, for self-help and advice; and Marker, which the company bills as a business-focused site.

Momentum is the latest addition to Medium’s suite of curated blogs and publications.

To date, Medium has raised over $130 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Spark Capital, GV, Greylock Partners, The Chernin Group, Lowercase Capital and Obvious Ventures.

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Gaming company Scopely adds $200 million more to its M&A stockpile

Scopely, the mobile gaming publisher behind titles including Marvel Strike Force, Scrabble Go, Yahtzee with Buddies, and Star Trek Fleet Command, has added another $200 million to its hoard of cash for mergers and acquisitions.

While some startups are fearing a cash crunch, other businesses seem to be preparing to go on a shopping spree. The economic slowdown has many businesses reconsidering their prospects and it’s a good time for startups and established businesses with lots of cash to consider going on a shopping trip.

With $650 million in venture dollars raised so far, Scopely can certainly consider making some bids. The latest $200 million doubles the amount of money the company closed on for its Series D round. Investors included Advance, the privately held media and publishing company behind Conde Naste and a slew of local news online and print publications, and the consumer focused investment firm, The Chernin Group.

“The FoxNext Games acquisition reinforced our commitment to M&A, and the opportunity to partner with Advance and TCG was a welcome addition to further support our strategy,” said Javier Ferreira, the co-chief executive officer of Scopely, in a statement.

Advance’s investment comes as the company experiments with various new media, entertainment, and publishing formats of its own and looks to invest in more digital media companies, according to a statement.

Chernin, a longtime investor in Scopely since the company’s earliest rounds said that its investment in Scopely on the heels of closing a $700 million new investment fund was a no-brainer.

“As the traditional media industry continues to go through unprecedented change, we believe that Scopely has all the ingredients for tremendous success—exposure to games (the fastest-growing sector in media), a scalable and durable technology platform, a diversified set of well-known IP, an attractive economic profile, and a team hyper-focused on execution and long-term success,” said Jesse Jacobs, a co-founder and partner at The Chernin Group .

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LA-based gaming company, Scopely, expands in Spain and Ireland

The Los Angeles-based gaming company, Scopely is expanding its geographical footprint in Spain and Ireland.

The company is building out its Barcelona offices tripling its office space and planning to significantly expand its 100-person-strong team in the city. Meanwhile, Scopely is also planning to invest heavily in expanding its strategy-focused game studio, DIGIT, in Dublin.

Scopely didn’t say how many jobs it would be adding in either location.

The company has now hit lifetime revenue of over $1 billion across its franchises and recently launched “Star Trek Fleet Command” and “Looney Tunes World of Mayhem”. Scopely also has licenses to develop games for World Wrestling Entertainment and The Walking Dead franchise.

“We are thrilled to expand our European footprint to accommodate our exponential growth,” said Javier Ferreira, Co-CEO of Scopely, in a statement. “I am excited to further lean in to the Barcelona market, which has top-quality talent. The same is true in Dublin with top tech talent flocking to the area, and both offices have amassed impressive highly-specialized expertise. Our Dublin and Barcelona teams play a critical role in the Scopely journey, and we are actively hiring across both markets.”

The company also plans to double its footprint in its hometown of Los Angeles in 2020.

The company has raised more than $250 million in financing to date from investors including Greenspring Associates, Greycroft Partners, Revolution Growth, Evolution Media Partners, Highland Capital Partners, Horizons Ventures, Sands Capital Ventures, The Chernin Group, Take-Two Interactive, Kobe Bryant, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Peter Guber, Jimmy Iovine, and Brendan Iribe.