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Journalists might be struggling to make money, but marketers are shelling out big bucks for written content.
Scripted, a three-year old company, has built an entire business out of helping meet that demand, and today, it’s announcing that it has raised $ 9 million in new funding.
For Scripted’s customers, usually marketers and companies, the service is designed to be easy and efficient. To commission a piece of content, customers submit a request with details on the type of content they need, the length, topics, keywords, and so on. They then receive pitches from writers Scripted has deemed good matches based on expertise and track record. Once the customer has approved a pitch (or more), they receive the drafts within a few days, which they can then get revised if needed before approving the final version.
Scripted’s pricing is based on the type of content and the level of expertise required. Scripted writer can produce almost anything from social media posts to technical white papers. Right now, customers can also opt to add images to their content through Scripted’s partnership with Creative Commons, though it’s working to integrate additional services to sell images.
“Basically, for the digital marketer, we want to be the one place where they come to create any type of digital content,” said cofounder and chief executive Sunil Rajaraman in an interview with VentureBeat.
Much of the company’s new funding will go towards helping it scale, in particular, through technology. As Rajaraman explained, when content agencies scale, that normally means they hire more and more people to handle their growing customer base and all the management that requires. Scripted, on the other hand, wants to automate as much of those needs as possible, including its writer screening process, its matching process, and the monitoring of reviewers.
Scripted also plans on expanding its services. Along with adding new photography vendors, Scripted will also launch a standalone copy-editing service in the next year. Rajaraman said the service is already running internally as every piece of content is independently copy-edited by one of Scripted’s freelance editors, and will be rolling out due to the high demand for copy-editing the company has been seeing.
“The way we see the business is that content creation is the most painful part of marketing. The marketer can’t run a campaign without content,” Rajaraman said.
Rajaraman also shared some of his company’s latest numbers, including that it gets about 500 writer applications per week (it accepts only about 18 percent of applicants), that 500 new businesses register every month (though not all use the service), and that both its revenue and number of jobs have tripled since last year.
Storm Ventues led the round, with partner Tae Hahm joining the board as part of the deal. Justin Moore, Auren Hoffman, and current investors Crosslink Capital and Redpoint Ventures are also participating. Scripted is also raising $ 200,000 of the round through angel investor Gil Penchina’s late-stage syndicate on AngelList.
Disclosure: Crosslink Capital is an investor in VentureBeat.
Scripted was founded in 2011 by Rajaraman and Ryan Buckley and is based in San Francisco. The company previously raised a total of $ 5.5 million in funding.
