The Bilbao startup Brandconthas been selected by 500startups, one of the most prestigious American accelerators in the USA, to be located in Silicon Valley.
Brandcont: a new concept of content distribution for brands.
BrandCont is the first "marketplace" in Spanish where brands can plan and automatically publish corporate content or "branded content" in the editorial spaces of digital media. The latter receive through BrandCont corporate information generated by the brands in accordance with their editorial line.
To this end, it has developed a unique technological platform that streamlines and automates the publication of this content in multiple media, allowing for simultaneous planning and insertion, as well as obtaining large audiences from premium generalist and vertical media.
«The initiative has been led by Gorka Muñecas, who is known in the Basque Country for having brought the web-TV concept from the USA by creating soda.tv, a production company specialising in internet video. On this occasion, Gorka and his partners have carried out the reverse process, taking a new business model from here to the USA, a market where innovative companies are better received, both due to a greater capacity to attract investment and higher adoption by customers,» comments Diego Gutierrez Zarza, an expert in new business models and their financing.ABRA INVEST).
Content marketing, a target for American VCs
In addition to this deal, we have recently seen investments by American Venture Capitalists in content marketing companies, such as BrightEdgeSan Mateo, California-based content marketing platform developer, has raised $42.8 million in a Series D round. The round was led by Insight Venture Partners and was also backed by existing shareholders Intel Capital, Battery Ventures, Altos Ventures and Illuminate Ventures.
«Content marketing is taking on a very significant weight in brands» marketing budgets. BrightEdge combines content distribution capabilities with analysis and metrics capabilities that are much needed for SEO experts. The size of the funding rounds in the USA is noteworthy, almost €43m. In Europe, these sorts of amounts are only seen for very consolidated and internationalised companies, analyses Diego Gutierrez.
Another Spanish case: Brandrain
In the first quarter of 2013, Brandrain raised a round of investors led by Inverready's crowdfunding platform (Thecrowdangel) and backed by ENISA for a total of approximately €500,000. Brandrain is a SaaS tool designed to capture, monitor, analyse and take action, measuring the impact on brand reputation of all communication and branding actions both online and offline.
«We actively participate in the management of Brandrain, and the development the tool has undergone in these few months has been spectacular. Current clients are getting much more out of it for managing their brand reputation in this brief period of time,» highlights Diego Gutierrez.