Social commerce site Tapiture has secured $2.25 million in its seed funding round, TechCrunch reported. Of that amount, $1.25 million is new capital and $1 million came from last year's convertible note. JUMP Investors led the round which was also joined in by Barry Sternlicht, Herb Simon, Brad Keywell, Brian Lee, Sam Bakhshandehpour, Dave Leyrer, Happy Walters, actress Hilary Swank, Dwight Howard and Amar'e Stoudemire. As part of the deal, Randall Kaplan of JUMP Investors will joining the Board of Directors of Tapiture.
In a statement about the funding, Tapiture Chief Executive Officer John Ellis said, "Tapiture's traffic and revenue growth proves that consumers are looking for a new avenue to discover and share unique content - whether related to personal style, art, design, travel, food, or entertainment. This infusion of new capital will allow our team to aggressively pursue our market and merchant expansion efforts as we shape the future of social commerce."
Tapiture allows users to share content and purchase products that they are interested in. According to the Tapiture website, the platform allows users to collect videos, pictures and products from their favorite sites, share these on social media and explore the content posted by others with similar interests.
A TechCrunch report in 2012 called the site then launched by Resignation Media as a "Pinterest for Men." However, Tapiture has since become independent and according to a company spokesman, its target audience is not anymore just men, the report said. Tapiture has now called itself a place where users can "access millions of favorite things." It says 3 million unique visitors visit the site each month and adds that it has 100 million pageviews a month, the report said.
An LA Tech Rise report last year said that Venice, California-based Tapiture is the Number 1 referrer of traffic to some sites.
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