After closing a $750,000 seed round in July 2012, video messaging platform Vsnap announced Monday it has raised a second seed round—this one ringing in at $500,000.
Returning investors participated in the round, including Ted McNamara, Rue La La’s founding CFO, California-based Warm Springs Venture Investments, as well as angel investors Georgia Murray, Mark Maloney and Joe Dello Russo, according to the Boston Business Journal. Seven new investors also threw their money in, such as Frank Selldorff of Momentum Equity, Bob Stringer of Crimson Seed Capital and Christopher Mirabile of Launchpad Venture Group.
The 2011 MassChallenge finalist will use the financing to further develop and expand Vsnap’s offerings, which are currently being used by Allstate Insurance, IT giant EMC and online education company Penn Foster. With Vsnap, each brand is able to humanize their business communications through short personal video messages.
Following a pilot test, Penn Foster discovered individuals who received a video message encouraging them to buy books were 33 percent more likely to take action than those who received a traditional email, according to the Boston Business Journal.
As a company that’s been re-thinking online education for more than 100 years, Vsnap is a perfect complement. In a prior interview with BostInno, Penn Foster CEO Frank Britt noted, “We continue to modernize the student experience,” and what better way than by connecting with students via video message?
Last week, Vsnap announced the platform integrated with Salesforce.com, as a means of putting “quick, personal video messaging right into sales teams’ existing workflow, and to make it easier for [companies] to track how using Vsnap impacts [their] sale outcomes.”
The team has been generating revenue from some of their pilots, as well as some subscriptions, Vsnap Founder and CEO Dave McLaughlin told the Boston Business Journal.
In an age where brands are turning to Vine to produce commercials, the company’s quick success only marks the beginning of where Vsnap is expected to head. McLaughlin admitted to the Boston Business Journal: “The best thing that ever happened to Vsnap was the emergence of these consumer video messaging applications that are re-training consumers how to use video."
We have reached out to McLaughlin for comment on what this $500,000 milestone means for Vsnap, and will update the post following his response.
