Ello raises another $5 million for its ad-free, invite-only social network
This brings Ello's total funding to $11 million raised in the last six months, with the new round led by Colorado-based Foundry Group and TechStars.
Ello first whizzed to popularity last September as a sort of anti-Facebook. By the beginning of October, it was seeing 50,000 sign-ups every hour and had more than 1 million registered users and 3 million on the wait list by the end of the month.
The initial media hype has definitely died down, but CEO Paul Budnitz tells Smith that continued growth is strong enough to make the new funding necessary.
"It's more runway, and the ability to hire more people," he says. "We took a look at our plan, and we want to develop faster."
Today's new money also comes with a full-site redesign. Photos on Ello now look bigger than ever and the back-end got freshened up, too, meaning new features like private messaging, private groups, and "loves" will roll out soon.
Ello's also prepping an app, which it says will launch on Android and iOS sometime this spring.
Neither the new site nor the app will have ads of any sort. Not only have Ello's founders promised that they'll never sell ads, but they can't legally. Ello is a State of Delaware Public Benefit Corporation, meaning it operates as a for-profit company but can't make money through selling ads or user data. Instead, the startup will make money by offering premium features, like the ability to do multi-account sign-in or invert the color scheme of the website. The company has also sold a bunch of T-shirts.
Ello's investors aren't worried about this freemium model, in part because they believe in Budnitz.
"There's a lot of Steve Jobs there," TechStars Mark Solon tells Smith. "He's brilliant and he's crazy-a good kind of crazy. And people like Paul are crazy enough to change the world."