Published: January 18, 2012
LinkedIn Co-Founder Reid Hoffman Joins Skype Co-Founder Niklas Zennström on Wrapp Board as Greylock Adds $5 Million to Series A
STOCKHOLM - (BUSINESS WIRE) - Wrapp, the new social gifting service, today announced that Greylock
Partners is adding $5 million to the company's Series A funding and
co-leading the round with Atomico, the international venture capital
firm formed by Niklas Zennström, co-founder of Skype, Kazaa and other
companies.
Wrapp, which lets you celebrate friends and family with free digital
gift cards provided by top brands that want to attract new customers,
received $5.5 million in November from Atomico and the Nordic venture
firm, Creandum, which provided Wrapp's original seed funding nine months
ago.
The Series A funds are being used to launch Wrapp's social gifting
service this quarter in the U.S. and U.K., and expansion throughout
Europe and additional major markets around the world later this year.
Reid Hoffman, a Greylock partner and co-founder of the social network,
LinkedIn, will join Zennström, Atomico's CEO and founding partner, and
Johan Brenner, Creandum partner, on Wrapp's board of directors.
Created for social media and smartphone users, Wrapp makes it fun and
easy to give, receive and redeem digital gift cards using mobile devices
or the Web, and allows friends to contribute to gifts given by mutual
friends.
Gift cards, a $100 billion industry in the U.S., have been the most
popular gift request for five years running, according to the National
Retail Federation (NRF) in Washington D.C. Eight in 10 holiday shoppers
planned to give gift cards in 2011, a recent NRF study reported.
"The value of Wrapp's social gifting service is instantly obvious to
merchants around the world, and in just a few short months the company
has demonstrated its ability to quickly scale among consumers," said
Hoffman. "This is a viable, profitable business model from the get-go,
with hooks into some of the top global and national merchants in the
biggest markets worldwide."
Wrapp is currently growing more than 30 percent week-over-week and is
now working with more than 25 top merchants in Sweden including the
country's largest sporting goods retailer Stadium, Dixons Retail's
consumer electronics chain Elgiganten, Amazon's LOVEFiLM.com, designer
underwear brand Björn Borg, street fashion brand WeSC, and home
improvement chain Clas Ohlson.
"I very much welcome Reid on the board, and believe we now have plenty
of fire power to successfully take on the U.S. market," said Zennström.
Added Brenner: "Niklas has been instrumental in our efforts to attract
additional engineering expertise and opening doors at U.K. merchants. We
know Reid will do the same for us in the U.S. and elsewhere around the
world - plus much, much more."
Wrapp was started 2011 by Hjalmar Winbladh and a team of entrepreneurs,
including Andreas Ehn, Spotify's founding chief technology officer; Carl
Fritjofsson, digital media entrepreneur and former advisor to
Groupon.se; Aage Reerslev, founder of mobile browser Squace; and Fabian
Mansson, former CEO of H&M and Eddie Bauer. Winbladh co-founded Sendit,
the first mobile Internet company, where he was CEO and took it public
in 1997 before being acquired by Microsoft. In 2006 Winbladh co-founded
Rebtel, the world's largest independent mobile VoIP company.
"The technology and partners are in place to make giving gifts of real
value as easy and fun as writing a greeting on someone's Facebook wall,
" said Wrapp CEO Winbladh. "With the addition of Reid, we now have the
dream team board of directors needed to achieve our aggressive goals of
taking Wrapp global in 2012."
About Greylock Partners
Greylock partners with entrepreneurs to help them build market-leading
businesses. Over the past 45 years the firm has worked with hundreds of
companies, 150 of which have gone on to IPOs and 100 of which have gone
on to profitable M&A events. Such companies include Ascend
Communications, CheckFree, Constant Contact, Continental Cable, Decru,
Data Domain, DoubleClick, Internet Security Systems, Legato, Media
Metrix, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Openwave, Open Market, OutlookSoft,
Polyserve, Red Hat, RightNow Technologies, Success Factors, Tellabs,
Trilogy and Wily Technology. Current Greylock portfolio companies
include Apptio, Cloudera, Data Robotics, Facebook, Groupon, Imperva,
LinkedIn, One Kings Lane, Palo Alto Networks, Pandora, Picarro, Redfin,
Workday and ZipCar. For more information about Greylock Partners, visit
our Web site (http://www.greylock.com)
or blog (http://www.greylockvc.com)
or follow us on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/greylock)
or Twitter (@greylockvc).
About Atomico
Atomico is a leading international venture capital firm formed in 2006
by Niklas Zennström, a successful serial-entrepreneur and co-founder of
Skype, Kazaa and other companies. Atomico seeks to deliver outsized
returns to investors by being the partner, and investor of choice, for
fast-growing technology companies that will become global category
winners. It has so far invested in more than 50 companies on four
continents. Atomico is headquartered in London with offices in São Paulo
and Beijing. For more information about Atomico, please visit: http://www.atomico.com/
About Creandum
Creandum is a Nordic venture capital firm investing in innovative and
fast-growing technology companies within consumer, software and hardware
industries. The firm has €120M under management and investments in
companies like Spotify, Izettle, Cint and Videoplaza. All investment
professionals at Creandum have started companies or been part of
successful startups during their career. For more information, please
visit www.creandum.com
About Wrapp
Wrapp is a social gifting service for celebrating friends using mobile
devices or the web. Wrapp allows friends to give and contribute to free
and paid digital gift cards provided by top brands, making it as easy to
send a gift of real value, as it is to send a greeting. Founded in the
first half of 2011 by a group of serial entrepreneurs, Wrapp is based in
Stockholm, London and Silicon Valley. Celebrate with friends every day
at www.wrapp.com

Media contacts:
Wrapp
Greg
Spector, +1 415 717 4666
greg@wrapp.com
or
Atomico
Guy
Dennis, +44 20 7499 1093
guy@atomicoventures.com
or
Greylock
Partners
Mary Devincenzi, +1 408 559 1820
mdevincenzi@sparkpr.com
or
Creandum
Johan
Brenner, +46 709 50 87 98
johan.brenner@creandum.com
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