Koji, an app development company that builds link-in-bio tools for content creators, has raised $20 million in fresh funding.
Cofounded in 2016 by Veoh founder, former Google product manager, and former MySpace CTO Dmitry Shapiro, Koji launched its flagship link-in-bio product early last year.
Like other link-in-bio tools, Koji’s allows creators to link out to a variety of things—whether that’s their other social accounts, their ongoing projects, their merch shops, and so on—with one custom URL.
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Unlike other companies, though, Koji augments its link-in-bio product with what it calls “mini apps.” It offers more than 200 of these single-function apps that creators can include on their link-in-bio landing page. Among them are TipJar, for accepting donations, and Billboard, which lets creators sell ad space on their landing pages.
Koji says it has around 150,000 creators currently using its link-in-bio platform.
In a press release about its new funding round, the company said it will “use the new funding to grow its engineering and creator teams, accelerate development of the platform, and further develop its Web3 and crypto offerings.”
The round was led by Jump Capital with participation from new venture capital investors HBSE Ventures, Electric Feel Ventures, Visary Capital, Metaversal, and University Growth Ventures.
Existing VC investors Galaxy Interactive and BITKRAFT also participated, along with a lengthy roster of individuals: Shivakumar Rajaraman, head of product at OpenSea and former VP of commerce at Meta; Francis Ma, head of Google’s Firebase; Peeyush Ranjan, VP of engineering at Google; David Zhang, director at Silver Lake; Scott Roberts, VP and head of business development at LinkedIn; Keren Baruch, product lead for creator strategy at LinkedIn; Mohammad Barhoush, director at IAC; Punit Singh Soni, CEO of Suki; Ujjwal Singh, head of workplace at Facebook; Brett Chalabian, software engineer at Google; Michael Eisner, former CEO of Disney; Art Bilger, founder of WorkingNation; Stefano Corazza, VP at Adobe; Bhaumik Kotecha, head of business operations at Cash App; Chris Abad, director of user ecperience at Google; Kum Hong Siew, COO at Airbnb China; and more who were not named.
Sean Thielen, Koji’s co-founder and chief architect, said in a statement that he believes the company’s app development technology and planned Web3 features will “give rise to a future where creators have true equity and governance in the tools and services on which they rely to make their livings, and developers and entrepreneurs have new paradigms for thinking about the next generation of creator economy apps.”
This latest funding round brings Koji up to a total of $36.1 million raised.
