There is a very real “crunch” going on at the Series A and Series B levels of funding, as a number of startups that launched to great enthusiasm a few years back are having trouble getting more support from investors nowadays. That’s especially true for companies with a heavy focus on the social web. But Wrapp, the social gifting service, has shown that it is not another victim.
Wrapp is announcing today that it has closed on $15 million in fresh funding to continue to grow its business, which is jointly based in Stockholm, Sweden and San Francisco, California. The round, which serves as Wrapp’s Series B, included participation from existing Wrapp investors Greylock Partners, Atomico and Creandum, along with new investors American Express, Qualcomm Ventures, and SEB Private Equity. This brings the total amount invested in Wrapp to $25.5 million.
Wrapp co-founder and COO Carl Fritjofsson swung by TechCrunch TV on his latest visit to San Francisco this past week to give us a hands-on look at the latest version of Wrapp and discuss the new funding, and you can check it all out in the video embedded above. He said that the fresh money comes after a period of solid growth for Wrapp, which allows people to give their friends presents such as gift certificates to certain stores. More than 1 million users have gifted more than 15 million gift cards through the service, he says, with more than 200 retailers worldwide providing gift cards through the platform as a marketing tool.
Going forward with the new funds, Fritjofsson says that Wrapp is going to focus on more growth in its existing areas — and evolve the product in new ways. “We’re moving slightly beyond the pure friend to friend gifting” to extend its focus onto more comprehensive platforms and tools for the businesses who are catering to those users, he said.
Also in the video, we also talked about how Wrapp compares to other players in the space, most notably Facebook and its Karma acquisition which is now Facebook Gifts (that portion of our chat starts at around the 7:00 minute mark), what the experience in general was like raising a Series B during this general crunch (that starts at 5:30), more about what the future holds for Wrapp (starting at 8:00), and lessons learned from building a multi-national startup (that starts at 9:04.)