When Shelby.tv shut down its online video discovery engine earlier this month, some viewed it as a sign that the New York City-based startup was in trouble. After all, while CEO Reece Pacheco assured users that Shelby.tv would be back, it’s not every day that a startup just pulls its product without having something new ready to show off. Well, breathe easy Shelby.tv fans: Investors have doubled down with a new round of funding, which will allow the team to continuing working on bringing the next version of its video discovery app to market.
Last summer, Shelby.tv raised $1.5 million from Avalon Ventures and a group of angels that included DFJ’s Tim Draper, Buddy Media’s Mike Lazerow, Simulmedia’s Dave Morgan, and others, with Avalon’s Rich Levandov and Brady Bohrmann also joining the board. Now Avalon and other angels are back for more, putting an additional $2.2 million into Shelby.tv.
Pacheco announced the new round in a blog post published this morning, and gave the tiniest bit of an update on the company’s progress so far. “While much of what we have accomplished is not yet public-facing,” he wrote, “We have made a ton of technical progress in the past year and this round allows us to stay focused and continue to build upon our vision for video discovery.”
Previously, Shelby.tv had built a website and iOS app designed to make it easy to discover and watch interesting videos shared by your friends on social networks. But the first version of the Shelby.tv wasn’t quite where the team wanted it to be. And so, rather than continuing to support a product that it would later scrap, it decided to take the whole thing down — bookmarklets, Chrome extensions, iOS app and all — and start fresh, focusing 100 percent on the new product.
What’ll the new version look like? It’s too early to tell, but an earlier blog post gave some clues as to where Shelby.tv is going. It promises to be faster, with better processing power and more videos to choose from. The startup is also focused on improving community aspects of the platform, and providing new ways for its users to share videos with friends.
As for what the company plans to do with the funding, Pacheco wrote by email: “[The] funding allows us to stay focused on product for launch. We have all the skills we need on our team, but we may bring on a couple hires.”