Florida Funders Inks Joint Venture with Bridge Angel Investors

Florida Funders and Bridge Angel Investors close $1.025 million investment in VuPulse

Tampa, Fla. – June 4, 2019 – Florida Funders, a venture capital fund and crowd-funding platform providing early-stage capital to Florida companies, announces a joint venture with Sarasota-based Bridge Angel Investors for a Series A preferred round investment in VuPulse. Florida Funders invested $840,000 and Bridge Angel Investors funded $185,000 for a total investment of $1.025 million. New World Angels, based in Boca Raton, initiated the Series A Preferred round in June 2018 with an investment of $587,500 for a total exceeding $1.6 million.

VuPulse is a digital marketing platform offering post-click benefits to its customers’ digital marketing and advertising campaigns. VuPulse analyzes and segments post-click then delivers every consumer to their preferred place to watch or shop. VuPulse collects unique personal preferences to deliver improved market intelligence. Customers can develop look-alike models to reach new audiences and deliver even better targeted ads to individuals. For the consumer, it greatly enhances their experience, increasingly important today as a one-click opportunity has shown to boost the click-through rate to their selected destination.

“Florida Funders is extremely excited to invest in such an exciting industry,” said Saxon Baum, Director of Business Development for Florida Funders. “Being in Florida, it is nice to see an ad-tech play like VuPulse. VuPulse’s leadership team provides experience, as well as technology, to be able to change the landscape. We look forward to working with New World Angels and Bridge Angel Investors to grow VuPulse.”

“Our objective is to create an entrepreneurial ecosystem not just in the cities where we are based, but across Florida as a whole,” noted Wendie Chapman, Executive Director of Bridge Angel Investors. “This syndication effort marks an exciting and important milestone towards achieving our collective goal and putting Florida on the map as a state with valuable resources driving entrepreneurial innovation and growth.”

The Series A investment in VuPulse marks the first joint investment between Florida Funders, Bridge Angel Investors and New World Angels. New World Angels paved the way in June 2018 with their investment and held a board seat to provide guidance for VuPulse’s earlier stage. Florida Funders provides a unique combination of venture capital and crowdfunding to create a larger audience and funding potential. Bridge Angel Investors can provide in-depth subject matter expertise and mentorship specific to the digital media industry thereby supporting VuPulse’s expansion into new markets.

“Today, our customers include two media industry giants, along with emerging TV networks, movie studios, and entertainment publishers,” said Jason Wolfson, Senior Vice President of Marketing for VuPulse. “As we demonstrate increased marketing revenue and consumer intelligence to these initial customers, we will build on their successes to expand to others in the industry who deliver digital content.”

Florida Funders and Bridge Angel Investor’s investment allows VuPulse to expand their sales and marketing efforts. VuPulse expects to scale the awareness of the brand, product, and overall concept to the media and entertainment industries by showing, not telling. Customer Success Vice President, Brenda Cruz, joined VuPulse with the goal of helping to define product development to continue to improve the consumer experience.

For more information on Florida Funders, please visit www.floridafunders.com. Keep up with the latest news from Florida Funders on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

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About Florida Funders, LLC: Florida Funders is a hybrid of a venture capital fund and crowd-funding platform that invests in early-stage technology companies in Florida. The firm is led by an experienced team of serial entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and experienced angel investors with proven track record of successful exits and a shared passion for growing the next generation of Florida tech companies. Learn more at www.floridafunders.com and check out our explainer video on YouTube.

About BRIDGE Angel Investors: BRIDGE is a group of private, accredited investors based in Sarasota, Florida focused primarily on funding and mentoring early-stage companies to cultivate and support Florida’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. Members range from global tech experts, to former Fortune 500 CEOs to entrepreneurs who have launched and successfully exited companies based in Sarasota. With their passion for the region and expertise, BRIDGE is an essential link between early stage companies, universities, community organizations and other Florida-based angel groups to drive a more diverse and thriving economy. For more information, go to www.bridgeangelinvestors.com.

New World Angels: New World Angels is group of 60 accredited, private investors, operators and entrepreneurs dedicated to providing equity capital and guidance to early-stage entrepreneurial companies with a strong presence in Florida. Members of NWA have extensive experience in founding, building, and managing companies in a wide variety of industries. Since 2014, NWA has invested $21MM in growing US and international companies that either are based in Florida or have a strong presence in the state. In addition to providing funding, for more information, please go to www.newworldangels.com.

About VuPulse: Founded by former Comcast executive Kevin Hill and his business partner Jeff Kreger, VuPulse uses proprietary algorithms and databases to increase responses to media advertising by making it easier for the consumer to take the promoted action. Focusing initially on the media and publishing markets, VuPulse has tripled monthly recurring revenue already since the start of 2018 and has relationships already established with multiple networks and studios. More information can be found at https://vupulse.com/