Social gifting service Wrapp has received a present of its own, and it comes in the form of support from several of technology’s biggest thought leaders.
Greylock Partners -- a company that has worked with some of the biggest players in the industry, including Groupon, Facebook, and Pandora (News - Alert) – has announced it will bring an additional $5 million to Wrapp’s Series A Funding and will co-lead the round with Atomico, an international venture capital firm formed by Skype’s own co-founder, Niklas Zennström.
Joining Zennström on Wrapp’s board of directors will be Reid Hoffman, a Greylock partner and co-founder of the esteemed social network geared toward business professionals, LinkedIn (News - Alert), as well as Johan Brenner, a partner of Nordic venture firm Creandum.
The Series A Funds will go toward the launch of Wrapp’s social gifting service in this quarter in the U.S. and U.K., and expansion overseas in Europe and other major markets across the globe later in 2012.
The premise behind Wrapp is the ability to send, receive and redeem digital gift cards via social networks using mobile devices or the Web. In addition, friends are also able to contribute to gifts presented by mutual friends.
The National Retail Federation has dubbed gift cards, a $100 billion-and-growing industry, as the top gift request over the last five years, as eight in 10 holiday shoppers intended on giving gift cards in 2011, according to a recent study.
“The value of Wrapp’s social gifting service is instantly obvious to merchants around the world, and in just a few short months the company has demonstrated its ability to quickly scale among consumers,” said Hoffman in a press release. “This is a viable, profitable business model from the get-go, with hooks into some of the top global and national merchants in the biggest markets worldwide.”
Wrapp has experienced tremendous growth since its beginning, growing more than 30 percent week-over-week and boasting more than 25 top merchants in Sweden, including Stadium, the country’s largest sporting goods retailer, as well as Dixons Retail’s consumer electronics chain, Elgiganen, Amazon’s LOVEFiLM.com, designer underwear brand Bjorn Borg, street fashion brand WeSC, and home improvement chain Clas Ohlson.
“The technology and partners are in place to make giving gifts of real value as easy and fun as writing a greeting on someone’s Facebook (News - Alert) wall, “ said Wrapp CEO Winbladh. “With the addition of Reid, we now have the dream team board of directors needed to achieve our aggressive goals of taking Wrapp global in 2012.”
Excited by the news of this partnership when it first broke, TMCnet’s CEO Rich Tehrani (News - Alert) took to his blog in early January to express his enthusiasm for this new venture by Zennström, whom Tehrani described as a “brilliant entrepreneur” and a person who has “great timing.”
And, Zennström is just as elated: ““I very much welcome Reid on the board, and believe we now have plenty of fire power to successfully take on the U.S. market.”
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Tammy Wolf is a TMCnet web editor. She covers a wide range of topics, including IP communications and information technology. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Jamie Epstein
