BOOMWRITER MEDIA, a Boston-based company offering collaborative writing tools, has raised $4.1 million across two separate funding rounds from a trio of investors: Avila Venture Capital and two smaller family funds, the Miami-based Precorp and Zurich-based Suinvex. The company will use the money to make its first acquisition, the mobile language app LookUp, and to expand its commercial team.
In September, BoomWriter closed a $2.6 million “mezzanine” round from its investors, which served as a sort of bridge between its seed and Series A rounds. This month, it raised an additional $1.5 million in its official Series A. Both rounds were raised as convertible notes. The two rounds bring the company’s total raise to about $5.6 million, after a $1.5 million seed round in 2016 from the same investors.
Founded in 2010, and operational three years later, BoomWriter’s eponymous flagship tool lets students collaboratively write books based on pre-made prompts. It offers both a free version and a premium upgrade with additional features. The company also partners with educators to host five-day online camps for students to work on stories, and splits revenue with its educator-instructors in what CEO Chris Twyman calls a piece of the “gig economy.”
According to the company, BoomWriter has been used in about 40,000 classrooms to date, and the company has doubled its staff in the last six months. “We have significant plans in the next 24 months, not least to be the ‘go-to’ supplier of collaborative writing technology to anyone in education,” Bendicht Hugli, a BoomWriter board member and managing partner at Suinvex, said in a statement. “This investment round brings together all the pieces needed for cementing that position.”
