The startup closed Pre-Series A Round Led by Goodwater Capital, with participation from previous round lead DCM 

FlowGPT, an inclusive platform fostering an open ecosystem for AI application creators and the community, announced it has raised $10 million in a Pre-Series A round. The round was led by Goodwater Capital, the world's largest venture capital fund exclusively focused on consumer technology, with participation from DCM, a global early stage VC firm, which led the company's prior round while the company was still in stealth. FlowGPT is the largest open source store for AI-native applications, with a mission to bring AI to everyone. Since the company's launch in January 2023, FlowGPT has attracted millions of users monthly across 110 countries. FlowGPT's engaged user base has developed more than 100,000 AI applications, for use on LLMs, such as ChatGPT, Google PaLM and open source models like Pygmalion.

"We believe the biggest future for AI is in open ecosystems," said Coddy Johnson, Partner at lead investor Goodwater Capital. "FlowGPT is helping to lead the way by building the largest open platform for AI apps, with the widest choice for users and with the most flexibility and freedom for creators to choose their models and collaborate with their communities."

Before LLMs, developing software required a whole team of professional engineers, designers and product managers. The high cost and required skill base were barriers to creating software solutions, leaving a huge number of problems unsolved. FlowGPT founders, Jay Dang and Lifan Wang recognized this issue and the opportunity for LLMs to enable anyone to create AI-native applications using natural language (prompts). With a vision that AI would democratize software development, Jay and Lifan created FlowGPT, the largest all-in-one AI app store and community where users can directly explore, use, and create AI-native applications powered by the creativity of creators.

FlowGPT will use the funding to expand its engineering and research teams globally. The company is actively hiring front-end and back-end development engineers, mobile development engineers and product and operation staff. In addition, the funding will be used to further develop a dynamic and engaging community.

"Real world problems are being solved everyday through the creation and collaboration in the vibrant FlowGPT open ecosystem platform," said Hurst Lin, General Partner at DCM. "This platform serves as a unique space where top prompt creators converge to creatively build cutting-edge AI apps. We're happy to support the FlowGPT team in actively seeking to expand their team to harness diverse talents, perspectives, and expertise in shaping the future of AI-driven solutions."

FlowGPT is firmly committed to empowering creators, understanding that a thriving ecosystem hinges on fostering an attractive, engaging, and dynamic environment for them. To bolster this vision, FlowGPT recently partnered with industry giants such as Google, Leonardo.ai, and Opus Clip for the latest FlowGPT Hackathon Season 3. This initiative attracted more than double the previous number of participants. This level of engagement underscores FlowGPT's dedication to nurturing a vibrant and innovative community of creators.

In the near future, FlowGPT will also be launching their Flow mobile app. The Flow mobile app is a brand new multimedia experience that differs from the current website. It combines the power of LLMs, agents, text to speech, text to image and text to video, to bring AI to users' daily lives.

D-ID Agents can hear, think, and speak in real-time, enabling businesses of all sizes to provide consumers with the lifelike customer experience and service they demand  

D-ID, the leading platform for the generation of digital humans, today announced the general availability of D-ID Agents – highly customized, autonomous AI avatars that can take verbal commands from users and respond in multiple languages, using facial expressions and hand gestures. Companies can seamlessly integrate D-ID Agents into their digital platforms, enhancing customer experience and marketing with human-like interactions.

D-ID Agents address the growing demand for more natural digital interactions, aligning with predictions that a significant portion of digital communications will soon be avatar-supported. Natural User Interface (NUI) powers D-ID Agents and enables the avatars to engage in a conversation with a user, creating a sense of mutual understanding, emotional connection, and trust.

D-ID Agents also harness Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) technology, enabling them to comprehend the users' environment and respond to them accurately, intelligently, and swiftly with over 90% accuracy delivered in under two seconds. D-ID's RAG technology transcends the limitations of traditional language models, providing up-to-date and refined information. The use of RAG offers a major advancement in the development of conversational AI, thus combining the best of chatbots and AI assistants and parcelling them together in an engaging humanlike form. 

"Making D-ID Agents widely available is a leap forward in our mission to bridge the communications gap between humans and rapidly advancing technologies," said Gil Perry, CEO and Co-founder of D-ID. "As LLMs (large language models) become increasingly critical for enterprises, we understood that the natural progression was to move from text-based interactions to audio and video. So, our platform is not just about enhancing digital interactions; it's about transforming them into meaningful conversations, fostering trust and understanding between businesses and their customers."

The transition to general availability brings enhanced functionalities including advanced API options for enterprise-level customization and increased flexibility and the ability for all users to create a D-ID Agent through the Creative Reality™ Studio at no cost (for a limited time), with a limit of one active embedded Agent per account. Pro+ plans will now include voice cloning capabilities, allowing users to create personalized Agent voices directly within the platform.

"The overwhelming interest in Agents during our beta phase demonstrates that businesses are ready for a new way to provide online customer service that goes beyond the standard chatbot," said Eliran Kuta, CTO and Co-founder of D-ID. "Today's digital interactions must be seamless, intuitive, and lifelike and Agents enables businesses to offer just that."

The general release of D-ID Agents includes several key updates and improvements based on feedback from the beta phase. These enhancements focus on increasing accessibility, end-user analytics for business intelligence, and expanding the platform's language support to ensure a more inclusive and versatile user experience. Additionally, D-ID Agents can now be embedded and shared. 

Seeley brings over 25 years of global brand, digital, and performance marketing expertise to PayPal and its family of brands, including Venmo

PayPal Holdings, Inc. today announced Geoff Seeley has joined the company as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), reporting to Diego Scotti, Executive Vice President (EVP) and General Manager (GM) of Consumer Group and Global Marketing & Communications. Seeley brings over 25 years in global brand, digital, and performance marketing while building teams to drive transformative marketing models. Seeley was most recently the Global CMO and Communications Officer at CashApp and Afterpay.   

Seeley will be responsible for overseeing the Global Marketing team across PayPal's family of brands, including Venmo. At PayPal, Seeley will be focused on making sure the PayPal and Venmo value propositions are clear, compelling, and simple for customers. He will also focus on bringing new energy to the PayPal and Venmo brands by leveraging the company's innovative history, powerful product portfolio, and continuing to build on customer trust.

"Geoff has a rich and impressive background leading marketing teams and building brands across some of the biggest global companies," said Diego Scotti, EVP and GM, Consumer Group and Global Marketing & Communications, PayPal. "Geoff brings over 25 years of expertise in transforming global consumer and B2B brands by leveraging cutting-edge digital and performance marketing and building strong teams focused on enhancing brand awareness and engagement with customers."    

Seeley previously worked on Airbnb's Homes business, where he had responsibilities across regional brand marketing, product marketing, global media, brand partnerships, marketing analytics, and research. Additionally, Seeley worked with Unilever as Global Communications Planning Director, where he helped established, legacy brands transform their marketing models and technology, upleveling the brand experience for customers. 

Ad-Shield, a provider of next-gen adblock recovery solutions, announced today the successful closing of a $2 million Pre-Series A funding round. Shorooq Partners led the oversubscribed round, joined by existing investors, Bass Investment and Hashed.

Launched in 2023, Ad-Shield leverages its proprietary adblock recovery technology to help publishers monetize previously unreachable audiences. Globally, it is estimated that over 30% of internet users employ some form of adblocking services, willingly or unwillingly. These services disadvantage many businesses, most notably publishers, who rely on ads for customer insights and revenue generation. Until now, there have been few options for publishers to address this growing issue and Ad-Shield aims to break the status quo.

“More and more publishers are struggling to stay afloat with declining ad revenue and increasing costs,” said Dustin Cha, Co-Founder & CSO of Ad-Shield. “We’ve seen as high as 65% adblock usage on some of the publishers that we serve, and this is frankly a matter of staying alive for them. Many publishers have come to us asking for help, trying to reach this audience, with no real viable solution. That’s why we have developed this next-gen technology to give more publishers access to this new solution while maintaining audience trust.”

Ad-Shield’s mission is to create a sustainable, ad-supported web ecosystem – rather than to remove ads entirely. Intrusive ads lead to the installation of adblockers, which in turn causes revenue loss for publishers. In desperation, publishers increase the number of ads or compromise on quality, triggering a further rise in adblocker usage. This cycle not only affects publishers but also advertisers, who experience diminished returns on their ad spend and obscured performance metrics.

To break this vicious cycle, Ad-Shield focuses on protecting a minimal number of ads to promote a healthier digital ad ecosystem. This approach has garnered significant market interest, evidenced by the company’s 30%+ monthly growth since its launch and overwhelming demand from global publishers.

“We believe in the mission of Ad-Shield,” said Shane Shin, Founding Partner of Shorooq Partners. “With its innovative technology, Ad-Shield is becoming a key disruptor in the industry by providing publishers better and easier ways to engage with adblock traffic. This will create a new market that benefits digital publishers, advertisers, and consumers alike, around the world.”

With this new funding, Ad-Shield plans to expand its team and accelerate the market introduction of its new product. “We are emboldened every day by the publishers we meet and support,” added Dustin. “Most of them struggle to effectively manage adblock traffic, which continues to grow. We’re thrilled to help them focus on what they do best - generating quality content.”

International Consumer Collective Powered by the Stagwell Marketing Cloud

Stagwell, the challenger network built to transform marketing, has unveiled "Unlock Surveys," a new global research community, providing brands and researchers with real-time access to the opinions and insights of hundreds of thousands of verified, trustworthy consumers across international markets. The panel aims to add over 200,000 new active survey members in 2024 and sits within the Stagwell Marketing Cloud (SMC) suite of data-driven SaaS products for modern marketers. 

"Unlock Surveys is arguably the most significant research panel launched in nearly a decade, in an industry that has seen research means consolidated, leading to commoditization, poor data quality and high participant turnover," said Mark Penn, chairman and CEO, Stagwell. "From brand competition for customer satisfaction and loyalty, to understanding voters in the political arena, the demand for capturing the public's opinion online is at an all-time high. As a pioneering pollster, I'm proud to see this advanced, member-first offering come under the Stagwell umbrella, making it easier than ever for brands to unlock quality insights that inform vital business decisions."

"Under the current model, researchers and brands can spend tens of millions of dollars per year collecting online research from an increasingly unreliable pool of external suppliers. In exchange, the quality of that deliverable has declined dramatically over the past decade as fraud rates have increased, respondent engagement has dropped, and trust has diminished," said Adam Dietrich, managing director, Unlock Surveys. "We're building Unlock Surveys in a way that connects with authentic people and is underpinned by proven, time-tested research principles."

Why this matters for modern marketing
Beyond the standard single-use research panels, the Stagwell Marketing Cloud will tap into proprietary data from Unlock Surveys to drive more comprehensive, two-way consumer behavioral analytics, thereby enhancing media targeting capabilities and providing marketers with more granular insights into the demands of modern-day consumers.

Brand marketers, media buyers and planners, researchers and other professionals in need of an international, representative collection of trustworthy respondents benefit from Unlock Surveys in a myriad of ways:

• Data purity enables speed and agility: Clients of any of Stagwell's 70+ agencies benefit from access to a centralized data house and the flexibility to pursue follow-up surveys, longitudinal studies, qualitative interviews, and other activities without the need to consult new or outside sources.
• Members are trusted, verified participants: All members are double-opted-in via email verification, and must pass a series of stringent quality measures that include cutting-edge bot deterrents and the latest in fraud prevention systems before ever being placed into a client survey. This weeds out bad actors and technology fraudsters, also ensuring the client is receiving a participant that is most likely to qualify for and complete their survey. These panels have been built to score highly in any "research on research" metric such as quality, consistency, and census representation.
• Applying science to behavior: As brands push the limits of quantitative research, it is vital to have a people engine to unlock the next phase of meaningful insights. This panel provides not only the respondents to participate in traditional research, but also the loyal, engaged group required for the ever-evolving complexities of behavioral understanding that come with ongoing engagement and analysis.

Award-Winning Platform Helps Enterprises Explore Survey Data, Deliver Insights, and Take Action

mTab, a leading market insights platform and a portfolio company of Milestone Partners, today announced the closing of a $15 million growth credit financing by Kayne Anderson Growth Capital. The latest financing comes as the company further accelerates its growth and global expansion to support more customers in new industries, along with advanced technology enhancements to its platform. 

mTab connects organizations and research providers of all sizes with a powerful, trust-driven platform to answer any question. mTab’s technology provides instant access to the largest selection of insights on markets, industries and brands, supported by up-to-date data, analytics, reports and an expert community. Over 50,000 insight professionals across 250+ organizations in 40+ countries use mTab for faster insights and better decisions to enhance experiences, motivate customers, and innovate to beat the competition.

“This new round will help mTab accelerate innovation in several key areas and broaden our product offering so we can help existing customers scale their insights while expanding in new markets. The funding will enable us to accelerate the growth of our team and invest even more in visualization and artificial intelligence features. We look forward to continuing to support our clients with industry-leading analytics solutions,” Mark Langsfeld, mTab’s CEO said.

“Our Kayne Anderson Growth Capital team prides itself on carefully selecting partners who are industry leaders,” said Leon Chen, Managing Partner, Kayne Anderson Growth Capital. “mTab solves the fundamental pain points of bringing enterprises' siloed market research together into one place for insight discovery, analysis, and visualization. We are extremely excited to partner with the company and leverage Kayne Anderson’s resources to grow the business into a clear market leader.”

The leading digital automation tool, now integrated with Amazon Ads capabilities, will be demonstrated at Booth #W9 from February 26-29 and roundtable session

Shirofune, the leading digital advertising automation management tool, will be exhibiting its expanded ecommerce and omnichannel advertising automation platform at eTail West 2024. All guests are invited to Booth #W9 for a demonstration of Shirofune’s automation tool, which is optimized to achieve greater ad performance and results to help advertisers and agencies maximize their return on ad spend (ROAS).

Shirofune will also be hosting three interactive roundtable sessions on February 26th. The sessions, titled “Next-Gen Search Strategies: Maximizing ROAS and Bid by Lifetime Value,” will be led by Rocco Baldassarre, VP of Account Strategy for Shirofune.

“When we exhibited at eTail last February, we had just started our expansion into North America with the objective to mirror our success in Japan and help marketers save on ad spend and time,” said Mitsunaga Kikuchi, Founder and CEO of Shirofune. “Now, one year later, we have continuously enhanced our platform with new integrations and are excited to showcase Shirofune's expanded capabilities at eTail West 2024 to help more advertisers experience maximized results from our platform.”

Powered by human intelligence and AI, Shirofune recently integrated Amazon Ads to their robust platform, enabling advertisers and agencies to seamlessly manage their Amazon ad spend alongside other major platforms such as Google ads, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, Microsoft Advertising, TikTok, and X (formerly known as Twitter). Benefits of the integration that will be demonstrated to eTail guests include:

• AI-driven Budget and Bid Management: Unlike manual adjustments required in the Amazon Ads console, Shirofune automates campaign-level daily budgets and bid amounts. Set budgets and target ROAS (ACoS) on a monthly basis or for any desired period, and Shirofune's algorithm automatically optimizes for maximum performance.

• Ultra-Precise Bid Adjustment: Crucial for Amazon Advertising as it Once Was for Google Ads
  It is extremely important for enhancing results to meticulously adjust bidding based on keyword/targeting & days of the week & time slots, just as it was in former Google advertising. Shirofune's ultra-detailed bidding algorithm, refined over 10 years in Google Ads, possesses such uniqueness that it has captured a 91% market share and similarly boosts outcomes in Amazon advertising unlike anything else available.

• Performance Analysis Simplified: Shirofune's Change Analysis report goes beyond the manual analysis required in the Amazon Ads console. It automatically analyzes factors contributing to performance changes and provides explanations in natural language, eliminating the need for tedious manual comparisons.

• Time and Money Savings: Shirofune's expertise, coupled with its AI-driven ad optimization, ensures maximum ROI on Amazon PPC campaigns. Say goodbye to the time-consuming task of manual ad management and let Shirofune handle it with efficiency and precision.

PostcardMania, the $100 million marketing technology firm with over 350 staff, has launched a new automated marketing product, Pre-Mover Daily Mailers. This marketing tool has been designed to assist businesses that want to target residents who have recently listed their homes for sale, had their home listing come under contract, and are about to move.

New movers represent a lucrative opportunity for businesse studies show that new movers spend nearly $10,000 on average within 180 days of moving, and that they are nearly unanimous (90%) in saying they're likely to try a new brand or company, and 88% say they're willing to try a new service provider when moving. Research values the new mover market at $170 billion annually with over 30 million people relocating per year on average.

PostcardMania's pre-mover automation allows businesses to get ahead of this demand and be the first to reach prospects prior to closing on their real estate contract, giving businesses an edge on their competition. Studies have repeatedly shown that timing matters in these instances, with consumers up to 78% more likely to buy from the business that contacts them first.

Pre-mover postcards are ideal for a number of different industries: moving, storage, insurance, cleaning, pest control, home inspection and home warranty as movers often relocate to new service areas.

PostcardMania's Pre-Mover Daily Mailers offers a large advantage over similar products already on the market and that's bringing direct mail automation to daily pre-mover data, allowing businesses to set up the campaign once, after which it will run automatically according to their chosen programming, targeting the right prospects in the right location in a timely manner according to pre-set budgets. The campaign focuses on reaching homeowners after their homes are listed on the market and immediately after their homes go under contract.

"Direct mail automation is changing the landscape of marketing it offers businesses both large and small more opportunities to reach prospects in record time," said PostcardMania CEO and Founder Joy Gendusa. "Our Pre-Mover Daily Mailers are an ideal example of how new marketing technology allows businesses to make the most of their marketing budget with increased precision targeting strictly the best, most qualified prospects at the ideal time."

True to PostcardMania's long-standing purpose to help American businesses grow through marketing that is proven, results-based, and affordable its Pre-Mover Daily Mailers will be offered at a low price of entry. Campaign size starts at 150 postcards a month thanks to PostcardMania's extensive digital printing technology, which is capable of producing individual postcards at scale without sacrificing time or quality. As a result, PostcardMania's pre-mover postcards cost as low as 91 cents per piece and include all addressing and mailing costs such as postage.

Additionally, every postcard is customized according to the business's unique needs based on card size, style, and design details down to the photos, contact information and personalized data all while abiding by PostcardMania's unique results-based design formula, which has been devised based on the campaigns of more than 100,000 clients.

The combination of perfect timing and personal touch providers these campaigns the potential to be hugely successful for businesses.