附近上门

Serialized fiction app landed $63.2 million in Series A funding, led by and , to tap into Hollywood鈥檚 storytelling community.

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The new investment brings Radish鈥檚 total funding to more than $68 million, co-founder told 附近上门 News. The company last raised funds in 2017, including a , according to 附近上门 data.

The startup will use the new funds to round out its leadership team, hire more writers and data scientists, and get its new Los Angeles office running. Romance is one of the top genres, but Radish would like to expand to horror, mystery and thriller.

鈥淯sing a data-driven production, we figure out what you want by testing covers, titles and pilots, and when we figure out what readers engage with, we give that to them fast,鈥� Lee added. 鈥淏ecause we are a content and media company, as much as a tech company, we also want to expand our content library, as well as spend money in marketing and data to distribute to a wider audience.鈥�

What you should know

The mobile fiction platform, based in New York and Seoul, was founded by Lee four years ago to provide bite-sized stories for reading via smartphone. Radish also produces Radish Originals, small, digestible episodes written by Emmy Award-winning soap opera writers, authors and Radish鈥檚 content team creators.

鈥淵ou can think of Radish as an HBO or Netflix for serialized fiction,鈥� Lee said. 鈥淭he stories are ongoing and are constantly updated. We are focusing on the behavior of binging content, and we take that to an extreme in some ways.鈥�

Readers can access thousands of serials across genres for as little as 20 cents each鈥攐r free if they are willing to wait鈥攁nd connect directly with favorite storytellers in live community chat rooms, while amateur authors can publish their own original stories via user-submitted content.

Radish has opened a new office in Los Angeles in order to hire new talent, build new hit content series based on targeted genres, adapt its original IPs into different forms of multimedia entertainment such as gaming and TV, and focus on scaling performance marketing for U.S. readers.

In terms of growth, the company鈥檚 revenue has grown 25 times over the past year, to more than $100,000 daily, and the platform has produced more than 6,500 episodes across 30 original series. Meanwhile, the top Radish series has made more than $4 million in just a few quarters and amassed more than 50 million cumulative reads, according to the company.

What investors are saying

, CEO of Kakao Page, said in a written statement that there is 鈥渆xciting growth potential of the global mobile fiction market and we will actively source and discover a diverse range of exciting stories together with Radish.鈥�

Meanwhile, , CEO and managing partner of SoftBank Ventures Asia, said in a written statement that Radish has shown it can change the way people are consuming content on their phones.

鈥淲ith its own fast-paced original content production, Radish is best positioned to become a leading player in the global online fiction market,鈥� he added.

Next steps for Radish

Meanwhile, Radish is focused on adding some leadership positions, including a creative director and vice president of content, as well as content, marketing, data scientists and finance experts.

The company has 45 employees now, and Lee expects to have approximately 70 by the end of the year.

鈥淲e鈥檝e grown fast in the past year, some of the stories are making $20,000 per day,鈥� Lee said. 鈥淲e want to accommodate a bigger content library and spend more on marketing, so we want to fill in those leadership roles immediately.鈥�

Illustration: iStock