This month, Built in Los Angeles will be featuring some “hot” startups across the various neighborhoods that, although may feel like different worlds at times, make up LA’s budding digital ecosystem. To recommend a startup or district of LA that deserves some love, email [email protected].
Culver City-based Squabbler set out in 2011 to embrace video engagement even before Vine and Instagram, co-founder and CEO Matt Bijur said. By using the Squabbler platform, publishers such as Major League Baseball and CNN engage with their audience via video and allow their users to “engage in an entertaining and valuable way.” As they solicit short-form videos from users, Squabbler even helps publishers to curate good videos and avoid “crappy” ones with their “secret sauce” technology that helps identify valuable content, Bijur said.
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Their specs: Squabbler’s eight-person team currently works with about 20 small publishers and seven to ten larger ones. They closed a seed round in February and are looking to raise Series A funding next quarter.
What they are working on right now: in the last two months, revamped the product and launched the second version of it and so we are really excited to launch with ABC News, The Guardian, Oxygen network. “It’s always gratifying and exciting to see things start to roll,” Bijur said. Continue to innovate, for example an integration with Instagram to pull Instagram videos into our modules so publishers can see them.
Their Culver City digs: After moving out of Amplify in Venice, the Squabbler team moved to a Jefferson Blvd office close to Maker Studios and NPR (who, by the way, would be “a fantastic customer and, proximally, it would be a very nice relationship,” Bijur said.)
You should keep an eye on them 2014: because they are looking to launch the Squabbler mobile setup early in the year. Because leaving written comments using a mobile device “is not the most elegant thing” especially if a user has a lot to type: “what’s a lot easier is clicking the record button.” As they head into the mobile world in the new year, they are looking to buff up both their tech and business development teams.
