PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Pulse, the award-winning visual news reader available for iPad, iPhone and Android, announced today that it has raised $9 million in Series A financing from New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Greycroft Partners, and Lerer Ventures. The capital will allow Pulse to grow its engineering team and expand to additional platforms. The company also announced that NEA’s co-head of consumer investing, Patrick Chung, will join Pulse’s board of directors and Greycroft Managing Director Alan Patricof and Lerer Ventures Manager and Huffington Post co-founder Ken Lerer will serve as Advisors.
“Not only do our partners have a deep understanding of mobile and Web, they share our philosophy of always putting product first,” said Pulse co-founder Akshay Kothari. “Alan and Ken were part of the original team who financed the Huffington Post, and we look forward to leveraging the insight they gained from building a new paradigm in news. This, combined with the consumer expertise that Patrick and NEA bring, gives us a team that will help us continue to innovate.”
Pulse has seen solid growth in the last six months, surpassing 4 million users across all platforms, and was recently recognized for its category-defining design with an Apple Design Award, which recognizes excellence in iPhone, iPad and Mac app design. Earlier in June, Pulse debuted Pulse.me, which allows users to save stories for later reading in their personal archives, viewable on any Pulse-enabled device or the Web.
“The Pulse team understands product design and how consumers interact with mobile content,” said Lerer. “They essentially created the news reader category when they launched on the iPad, and are redefining how people consume news.”
“The combination of technology and talent that the team at Pulse brings together has enabled them to jump to the head of the pack in providing customized news and related sources to readers of all iPad, iPhone, and Android devices,” said Patricof, a veteran media investor who founded and served as chairman of both New York Magazine and Details Magazine.
Pulse has content partnerships with some of the most recognizable names in media, including AOL, The Atlantic, CNET, Discover Magazine, Gawker, The Huffington Post, The New Yorker, Salon.com, TIME, Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal Digital Network, Yahoo! News and more. In addition, the app offers a variety of content discovery features, including an ever-growing featured content section, categorical browsing, searchable RSS feeds, and integration with Google Reader to connect users to the freshest, most relevant news and information.
About Pulse
Pulse is an award-winning application that makes it easy to consume news on mobile phones and tablets. Pulse users can choose up to 60 news sources in an easy to read, customizable interface on the iPhone, iPad, and Android phones and tablets. Pulse has been named to the Apple’s App Store Hall of Fame, chosen as an Android Editor’s Choice app, selected as one of TIME’s top 50 iPhone apps of 2011, and honored with the Apple Design Award. The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. For more information, please visit Pulse.me or follow us on Twitter @Pulsepad.
About NEA
New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA) is a leading venture capital and growth equity firm focused on helping entrepreneurs build transformational businesses across multiple stages, sectors and geographies. With approximately $11 billion in committed capital, NEA invests in information technology, healthcare and energy technology companies at all stages in a company’s lifecycle, from seed stage through IPO. The firm's long track record of successful investing includes more than 165 portfolio company IPOs and more than 265 acquisitions, including investments in technology leaders like Data Domain, CareerBuilder, Diapers.com, Groupon, Juniper, Macromedia, Playdom, Salesforce.com, and TiVo. In the U.S., NEA has two offices in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and one in Menlo Park, California. In addition, New Enterprise Associates (India) Pvt. Ltd. has offices in Bangalore and Mumbai, India and New Enterprise Associates (Beijing), Ltd. has offices in Beijing and Shanghai, China. For additional information, visit www.nea.com.
About Greycroft Partners LLC
Greycroft Partners LLC (greycroftpartners.com) is a venture capital partnership, formed to invest in promising Internet and digital media companies. With offices in New York and Los Angeles, Greycroft has deepened its bench to provide significant resources to early stage companies in its area of focus and, as a result, now has even greater coverage in these two markets.
About Lerer Ventures
Lerer Ventures is a New York-based, seed stage venture capital fund. Lerer Ventures invests in founders in the earliest stages of a startup’s life, seeking out those entrepreneurs with product vision, consumer insight, focused execution, and unwavering ambition. Its portfolio includes betaworks, chartbeat, Canvas Networks, BankSimple, gdgt, GroupMe, Greplin, and Venmo.