Thirty Labs

Feb 10, 2015

Posted With $2M In Funding, Thirty Labs Will Apply The Betaworks Model To Building Video Startups Some hot news for Fancy , the social shopping platform based out of New York. The company has raised a Series D round of around $20 million, a strategic investment led by Mexico’s Carlos Slim and CCC , a holding company out of Japan whose main business is the Tsutaya chain of book and media retailers. Fancy will use the funding to “continue to build out its technology platform and execute on new key strategic partnerships,” it notes in a blog post  announcing the raise. Given the investors, that will likely include more activities in Latin America and Japan. Fancy does not specify the amount of the Series D but we’ve heard the value from a very reliable source. Fancy’s own holding company, Thing Daemon,  hasn’t posted an SEC form about the round, either. Along with Carlos Slim and CCC, the company uses the blog post to thank Arturo Elias, a director of strategic partnerships at America Movil and a director at Telmex, as well as existing investors  Kering , General Catalyst , American Express , Jim Pallotta , Maynard Webb  and Acadia Woods Partners . Prior to this, Fancy had raised just over $104 million , from a list of high profile investors that also includes Will Smith, Len Blavatnik, Bob Pittman and Jack Dorsey. Slim is one of the wealthiest men in the world and while his very biggest investments have been in telecoms in Latin America, he’s also invested in  the New York Times, the mobile photo sharing app Mobli and a few other businesses. Originally compared to Pinterest, Fancy has been somewhat under the radar and keeps its cards close to its chest. But quietly, it has been building out its social commerce business. That’s included at least one acquisition ; and an (almost certainly) unplanned appearance as a player in the early days of Twitter’s “buy” button). More recently, it’s also been touted by Apple an an early partner in Apple Pay. It offers tools for merchants and publishers to embed Fancy streams directly on their sites and on Fancy’s own platform. On Android, it’s had between 5 million and 10 million downloads of its app. We’ll update this as we learn more. 0