In March of last year, DailyWorth, the personal finance daily email and community for women, raised an $850K seed round led by Robin Hood Ventures, with investors like Eric Schmidt’s TomorrowVentures, Social Leverage, 500 Startups, Venture51, Investors’ Circle, Joanne Wilson, David Cohen, Scott Becker, Peter Shankman, and Carol Chow getting in on the action.
Now, it seems that some of these investors want to more than double down on DailyWorth, as the startup announced that it has closed a $2 million series A round led by Joanne Wilson and StockTwits Co-founder and CEO Howard Lindzon‘s Social Leverage, along with contributions from former investors as well. The new round of funding brings DailyWorth’s total to just over $3 million.
BetaBeat initially broke the story yesterday, and last month blogger and angel investor Joanne Wilson told O’Reilly’s Radar what excited her about DailyWorth, saying that the startup has already “created tremendous traction and sells advertising at lightning speed” — to the point, apparently, that the startup was running low on inventory.
Investors and advertisers find the startup appealing because of the intelligent, no-nonsense way it is creating a community around financial literacy and money management — for women. It’s a targeted play by DailyWorth Founder and CEO Amanda Steinberg, already a six-time entrepreneur, who has set out to create a resource for women (already the money managers) that breaks down essential financial concepts and makes them easy to consume (on-the-go) for busy moms and female professionals.
The newsletter, which includes educational tidbits about finance as well as career advice, has already racked up over 200,000 subscribers in the U.S., and financial institutions like ING and H&R Block have joined as sponsors. Andrew Russell, formerly of Pilot Group, who has invested in email companies like Daily Candy and Thrillist, has also joined the startup as an independent board member.
The email newsletter has been making a comeback of late, and this is where DailyWorth, which has been coined “the DailyCandy for money” differentiates itself from other communities like the well-funded LearnVest.
DailyWorth is attempting to go beyond simply becoming another lifestyle or deals website for women that dishes out financial advice, seeking to help women understand money in a more granular way. A newsletter delivered directly to your inbox daily is a great method, if not old school, for ensuring that this financial education gets to its target audience directly and consistently — especially when that’s supplemented with great editorial content, because, as Steinberg says, women not only want to know how to budget and save, but also how to invest, demand higher salaries, and build a financial strategy for the future.
To further this goal, DailyWorth will be launching two new editions of its model early this year with “MoreWorth”, which targets “the affluent woman”, as well as “CreateWorth” for female entrepreneurs. MP Dunleavy, a former New York Times columnist will be leading the startup’s editorial team.
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