– SINGAPORE – PocketMath, the world’s largest selfserve mobile advertising platform, announced today that it has raised US$10M from Rakuten Ventures. This is the largest first round funding of any startup in Singapore and biggest single investment by Rakuten Ventures to date.
The Series A round will help PocketMath bolster talent acquisition, accelerate product development, and establish a deep strategic partnership with Rakuten. The Managing Partner of Rakuten Ventures, SaeMin Ahn, will join the company’s board alongside the founders JD Lee, Eric Tucker and Casey Grooms.
PocketMath helps businesses buy advertising on mobile devices through the programmatic trading of ads, also known as realtime bidding (RTB). The platform filters through hundreds of thousands of opportunities per second to execute highly targeted marketing campaigns that connect advertisers to their ideal audiences worldwide.
The founders are close friends who met at the University of Texas at Austin where they ran a student organization that promoted technology entrepreneurship. The friendship grew into a partnership years later. PocketMath is collectively their eighth and the most successful startup attempt.
Even with years of prior startup experience, the founders did not see success right away. PocketMath stumbled into mobile advertising only after experimenting with a variety of other ideas, including a foray into a facial recognition advertising service that was inspired by the Hollywood movie, “Minority Report”.
By bringing together the three big things in tech today mobile devices, programmatic advertising and data PocketMath has demonstrated its success with 8digit revenues and hundreds of customers evenly distributed across the globe, since the product was first launched in early 2013.
“PocketMath targets one of the most margin rich adtech segments for mobile”, said SaeMin Ahn, Rakuten Ventures’ Managing Partner. “This investment gives Rakuten a strong stake in the mobile advertising game, and we’re excited to explore how PocketMath can play a role in growing the Rakuten Marketing ecosystem in the future.”
PocketMath is doubling down its efforts to show everyone how accessible advertising can be with the right tools. “Our vision is to take what we’ve built for the big brands and make it available to everyone,” said JD Lee, cofounder and CEO of PocketMath. “People don’t want to understand jargon, they want to see results.”
“We got our start by making our platform dead simple for advertisers,” said Casey Grooms, cofounder and CRO of PocketMath. “You can really see our clients’ eyes pop when you click a few buttons and they get to see their ad, on their phone, just seconds later!”
PocketMath recently added Sales Directors in Mumbai, Sydney, and Washington D.C. to complement its existing sales presence in Singapore and San Francisco. However, its main recruitment efforts is still centred around its techheavy team of over 40 in its Singapore office where it grew almost threefold in the span of a year and continues to expand rapidly.
“Our team consists overwhelmingly of scientists and engineers.” said Eric Tucker, cofounder and COO. “We’ve built up a lot of tech expertise so that our partners and clients don’t have to. That sets us apart.”
About PocketMath
PocketMath is the world’s largest selfserve platform for buying mobile advertising programmatically.
Since its release in early 2013, the platform has achieved 8digit revenues by helping hundreds of businesses around the world execute highly targeted marketing campaigns that connect them to their ideal audiences. It has a techheavy team of over 40 in its Singapore office and is rapidly expanding its global sales presence.
About Rakuten Ventures
Rakuten Ventures is an early stage corporate venture capital fund focused on empowering the startup ecosystem to positively affect Internet services globally. The fund was originally launched in 2013 and counts Carousell, Visenze, Coda Payments and Send Anywhere among its investment portfolio. In June 2014, Rakuten Ventures launched a US$100 million global fund to target startups and companies in Israel, Asia Pacific, and the USA, with a focus on companies that can enable better user experience and facilitation.
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