Naritiv

Naritiv began life as a California corporation (originally incorporated in 2013 under the names Cogo, Inc. and Laffster, LLC) before relaunching as Naritiv in 2014, when it went through the Disney Accelerator (powered by Techstars) cohort. Co-founded by CEO Dan Altmann, Chief Product Officer Eric Posen, and founding engineer Daniel Archer, the company built a network of more than 300 Snapchat creators/influencers and used them to produce vertical, mobile-first branded 'Snapchat Stories' content for brands. An early flagship campaign grew ABC Family's 'Pretty Little Liars' Snapchat following to roughly 800,000 followers within three months, generating over 140 million views — a case study TechCrunch covered in March 2015. Other early clients included Marriott Resorts, Radio Disney, Coca-Cola, Redken, and Fox.

Naritiv raised a $1.2 million seed round (investors including Greylock Partners, Disney, and Mucker Capital, reported by March 2015) followed by a $3 million Series A announced in February 2016, led by Third Wave Digital (headed by former Machinima chairman Allen DeBevoise) with participation from Disney, Luminari Capital, Deluxe Entertainment, Wavemaker Partners, and angel investor Matthew Anderson (then CMO of Roku). A related SEC Form D filed January 19, 2016 shows a combined Regulation D equity offering of $6,336,328 from 32 investors with a first sale date of November 25, 2015 — a larger cumulative figure than the publicly announced $3M Series A alone, likely reflecting bridge/convertible-note investors rolled into the same offering; this discrepancy could not be fully reconciled from public sources. Board members per the SEC filing were Dan Altmann, Eric Posen, Allen DeBevoise, and Daniel Leff (co-founder and managing partner of Waverley Capital, who joined the board around November 2015).

By 2016, per a Techstars 'Pivot Stories' feature, Naritiv had shifted focus and built out a Snapchat analytics and reporting product for marketers on top of its content/influencer business. In March 2017, social media management company Hootsuite acquired this Snapchat analytics technology along with three Naritiv employees, who became the seed of Hootsuite's new Los Angeles office; Hootsuite's CEO Ryan Holmes framed the deal as a bet on rising Snapchat/video ad spend. Coverage at the time (TechCrunch, Marketing Land) was explicit that this was an asset/technology sale, not an acquisition of Naritiv as a company, and that Naritiv intended to continue operating independently, refocusing on its media/content business for younger, non-cable audiences.

Business model

Talent/influencer network and branded-content agency model: paired brands with a network of 300+ Snapchat creators/influencers to produce sponsored 'Snapchat Stories' campaigns, later adding a Snapchat analytics and reporting tool for advertisers.

Fees/revenue share from brand-sponsored influencer campaigns; later, a SaaS-style analytics product for Snapchat marketers (the analytics technology was sold to Hootsuite in 2017).