Brentwood startup raises $2.5M Series A round
Nashville Capital Network made the lead investment
Spiny.ai has published the details of its latest funding round.
This week, the Brentwood media tech startup announced it has closed on a $2.5 million Series A round, led by Nashville Capital Network. The round coincides with the company’s beta exit and global product launch.
Spiny will use the newly injected capital to further develop its software and grow its 23 person team.
Rohan Bedi, Spiny’s Chief of Staff says the company plans to hire six full-time, local employees — including three engineers and three sales people — over the next four months.
“Spiny recognized the need for innovation in digital publishing,” Sid Chambless, Managing Partner of NCN says. “We thought they were the ideal team to tackle the constantly changing landscape impacting the industry, namely first-party data, content monetization, and audience growth. The Spiny team lived it as publishers and they understand the need for tools to manage publishing assets.”
Founded two years ago by media veterans Nana Nyantekyi, Shannon Terry and Andrew Johnson, Spiny’s subscription based software promises to help digital publishers manage and scale the effectively.
Combined the co-founders have more than 50 years of media industry experience. Their collective resumes feature work with CBS Sports, Rivals.com, 247 Sports and Comicbook.com.
“Spiny was born out of our frustrations running publishing companies, where growth was achieved with large technical teams and complex technologies,” Nyanteki, who serves as Spiny’s CEO says. “The current tools on the market primarily focus on content and editorial analytics. We felt there was a need to develop a product that ties together all the core pillars of digital publishing - audience, editorial, and revenue.”
Utilizing artificial intelligence and data analytics, Spiny’s publishing platform enables users to better understand their audience, define content strategy, manage editorial teams and optimize revenue. The company also offers a separate advertising solution — Bidroll — which allows users to generate higher ad revenues.
Since launching beta testing in late 2020, the startup has attracted more than 10 midmarket and enterprise media outlets as clients, Bedi says. Notable clients include On3 Media, Outside.com and Leaders.com. It should be noted that On3 Media and Outside.com were founded by Terry.
“It’s ability to use machine learning for monitoring and anomaly detection ensures that we do not lose revenue due to poor ad bidder performance or broken ad units for example - all this in addition to the upside it creates via its BidRoll ad monetization product,” says Brandon O’Neal who serves as Vice President of Monetization, Ads, and Products at On3.com says.