I always wonder at what point a company just has enough money. I suppose the Toronto-based writing platform Wattpad didn’t have enough yesterday, because this morning the company announced it has raised an extremely plentiful series C round of $46 million.
Previously the company raised a series B round of $17.3 million. This new round should bring their total amount of funding up to $66.8 million. If I’m not mistaken, this round of funding should be among the top five largest in Canadian history, certainly behind Hootsuite’s $165 million and Shopify’s $100 million.
The round was led by OMERS Ventures, with participation from August Capital, Raine Ventures, and Northleaf Capital Partners.
Wattpad is the world’s largest community of readers and writers, where people can share unlimited written content across multiple platforms. CEO Allen Lao said that the company has grown 200 percent since one year ago today, and everyday “tens of thousands” of people join the community.
“We’re on-track to become one of the most successful consumer Internet companies in the world. With this latest investment we’ll continue to build a Toronto company that has global impact,” he said.
Wattpad says it’ll use the latest funding to expand its Toronto team. The company plans to move to a new downtown office space at the end of April. Some of the money will go towards product development and community growth.
All of Wattpad’s existing investors also participated in the round, including: Union Square Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Jerry Yang/AME Cloud Ventures, Golden Venture Partners, and Boris Wertz of Version One Ventures.
Wattpad calls itself the first social platform to create direct connections between readers and writers on a massive scale. Readers can access millions of free stories from any mobile device or computer, as well as interact with writers.
The company said more than 20 million people spend upwards of “5 billion minutes a month on Wattpad,” a rather interesting way of phrasing the amount traffic and engagement that Wattpad is currently attracting (five billion minutes is the equivalent of about 9,500 years).
While the majority of users reside in the US, UK, and Canada, Wattpad is already the number one app in the Philippines, and 10 percent of overall traffic comes from Spanish-speaking countries.
“People’s access to books and opportunities to tell the stories that matter to them varies greatly around the world. Wattpad is changing that by giving anyone, anywhere in the world, an opportunity to read and write from the devices they own.” said Jim Orlando, managing director at OMERS Ventures. “We’re proud to invest in Wattpad, one of the country’s most innovative consumer Internet companies, and watch its impact around the world.”
