The San Francisco-primarily based startup raised a $16 million Series B spherical of funding to similarly increase its free social calendar and occasion discovery platform that brings people collectively over shared experiences.
Goodwater Capital led the spherical with participation from Founders Fund, Floodgate and Raine. The new financing offers IRL a complete of $28 million raised because the agency was based in 2017. That consists of an $8 million Series A spherical from 2019 that was additionally led through Goodwater, according to our data.
“The most important thing we are tracking is time spent on the app because that not only shows usage and revenue drive, but for us it is time together,” Shafi said.
The new investment could be used to construct out IRL’s web product and extend the platform internationally. The platform’s first model got here out in June 2019, and has grown 10 instances since, Abraham Shafi, founder and CEO, advised Crunchbase News.
Since its launch, IRL has logged three hundred million hours of “Time Together” and is now seeing 1 million hours every day in Time Together. It has additionally carried out the top calendar app spot in the Apple App Store withinside the past six months.
“I’m proud of those stats,” Shafi added. “We are creating this social network calendar and making it a multidimensional product that connects with people.”
In addition to the investment announcement, IRL released new capabilities which includes its university network to assist college students follow activities and organize occasions with friends. The community started with a hundred schools and universities throughout North America, which includes USC, Harvard, Columbia and NYU. Students registered with a verified college e-mail address are granted access to the digital campus calendar with events for every major, membership or interest.
“IRL has been an amazing platform for us to engage with more of our audience and meet new potential users,” said Jenny Zhu, head of integrated marketing U.S. at TikTok. “The Weeknd Experience: TikTok Live was our first virtual concert experience and we added the event on IRL to grow visibility. IRL was seamless to work with and successfully helped us gauge early interest with 52K RSVPs and 1.1M followers on our profile in the week leading up to the concert. We see major traffic coming from IRL and are excited to continue our partnership!”
