500 Labs

500 Global, formerly known as 500 Startups, is a venture capital firm and incubator based in Mountain View, California, founded in 2010. The firm specializes in seed investments, primarily focusing on early-stage technology and financial services startups across various sectors, including biotech, e-commerce, fintech, and digital healthcare. 500 Global operates a four-month accelerator program, where it typically invests between $0.05 million and $1 million for a 5 to 10 percent equity stake in companies with at least $100,000 in monthly revenue. The firm targets a global market, with particular emphasis on regions such as the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Since its inception, it has invested in over 2,200 startups and supports the growth of innovation ecosystems through educational programs and partnerships. 500 Global also prioritizes investments in companies led by minority founders, reflecting its commitment to diverse entrepreneurial leadership.

Amjad Ahmad

General Partner

Chandini Ammineni

Partner

André Marcel Bally

Investor Relations Associate

Amal Enan

Partner

Max Fram-Schwartz

Venture Partner

Twwo Pun Jaruthassanakul

Investment Associate

Yolanda Kim

Principal

Matt Lerner

Partner

Jon Li

Director, Investor Relations

Jasmine Liew

Investment Manager

Robert Neivert

Venture Partner

Khailee Ng

Managing Partner

Krating Poonpol Ph.D

Partner

Ruangroj Poonpol

Venture Partner

Natavudh Pungcharoenpong

Partner

Mameaw Sapprasert

Partner

Reena Sharma

Investor Relations Associate

Mike Sigal

Partner, FinTech

Sanjay Singhal

Partner, Canada

Tanya Soman

Venture Partner

Paulina Szyrmer

Head of Global Education

Pat Naranpat Thitipattakul

Investor

Tony Wang

Managing Partner

Paul Yoo

Chief Financial Officer

Past deals in Social Media

Lucidya

Series B in 2022
Lucidya, LLC is a software as a service (SaaS) company based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, that specializes in social media monitoring and analytics. Founded in 2015, Lucidya offers a platform that enables businesses to gain insights into consumer behavior through real-time analysis of social media content. Its features include spike detection, trending hashtag identification, and social media statistics displayed on an interactive dashboard. The platform also provides real-time alerts, automated reporting, and competitive analysis, allowing organizations to make informed strategic decisions. Lucidya serves a diverse clientele, including agencies, brands, non-profit organizations, and media outlets, helping them to better understand and engage with their audiences.

XCUTE

Seed Round in 2020
A freelancing service that connects small business owners with digital media freelancers for short term projects in Saudi Arabia.

HYVE

Seed Round in 2019
HYVE helps users navigate their social media channels by allowing them to follow more people. It connects user's social media sites like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and others into one centralized app.

Noin

Seed Round in 2019
Noin, Inc. offers online content creation and media development services. The company also offers sales account management and social media management services for online businesses. The company was founded in 2016 and is based in Tokyo, Japan.

Flye

Seed Round in 2017
FLYE, Inc. designs and develops a real-time and location-based social engagement and analytics platform for brands and businesses. It enables to run geo-targeted social media campaigns. The company’s solution allows monitoring and tracking social media trends; engaging with influencers and brand loyalists; and analyzing the strength and impact of branded social reach. FLYE, Inc. is based in San Francisco, California.

Flye

Seed Round in 2016
FLYE, Inc. designs and develops a real-time and location-based social engagement and analytics platform for brands and businesses. It enables to run geo-targeted social media campaigns. The company’s solution allows monitoring and tracking social media trends; engaging with influencers and brand loyalists; and analyzing the strength and impact of branded social reach. FLYE, Inc. is based in San Francisco, California.

Talent garden

Series A in 2016
Talent Garden is a prominent innovation platform and coworking network that supports digital and technology professionals. Established in 2011 in Brescia, Italy, the company operates 23 campuses across eight countries, including Albania, Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Romania, and Spain. Talent Garden serves as a collaborative environment for startups, freelancers, and large corporations, fostering connections and professional development within the digital and tech sectors. The organization aims to cultivate vibrant, locally connected campuses that empower communities and enhance the growth of innovative ideas. With a growing membership of over 600 talents and more than 40,000 online community members, Talent Garden is dedicated to creating an ecosystem that nurtures entrepreneurial success and collaboration among professionals in the technology space.

Socius

Seed Round in 2016
Socius Live UG operates a social media curation and publishing platform based in Berlin, Germany. The company specializes in integrating branded content with social media interactions, allowing brands, events, and publishers to create engaging social hubs. Its platform utilizes technology to collect, curate, and display content from various social media channels, which helps brands automate and manage their social media advertising efforts. By matching advertisers' social content with publishers' pages, Socius enables the monetization of this content through custom native ads, enhancing the digital advertising landscape for both publishers and advertisers.

ALL DAY

Seed Round in 2016
All Day is building an editorial media brand and publishing technology for mobile-first Millennial audiences. The company leverages a network of owned and partner Social Media properties for content distribution and audience engagement, driving content sharing and virality. All Day’s network partners, writers, and editors manage posts, track analytics, and grow engagement through its CMS and Social distribution dashboard. Today, All Day maintains and engages a growing audience on Social Media channels through owned and operated content brands with over 28 million followers, as well as a distribution network reaching over 200 million followers across Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Included among the company’s more popular social accounts are HistoryinPics and EarthPix on Twitter. Through these owned and partner accounts, All Day distributes highly visual and shareable editorial content, which is often featured on its destination site AllDay.com.

Supergleu

Seed Round in 2016
Supergleu helps college students and employers connect through conversation.

Blurbiz

Seed Round in 2016
Blurbiz Media offers a SaaS-based platform that enables its users to create, edit, and distribute mobile optimized videos. Blurbiz Media offers tools that enable its users to schedule a time to publish their videos in a number of social media networks at the same time. Blurbiz Media was founded in 2015 and is based in Houston, Texas.

Socius

Seed Round in 2016
Socius Live UG operates a social media curation and publishing platform based in Berlin, Germany. The company specializes in integrating branded content with social media interactions, allowing brands, events, and publishers to create engaging social hubs. Its platform utilizes technology to collect, curate, and display content from various social media channels, which helps brands automate and manage their social media advertising efforts. By matching advertisers' social content with publishers' pages, Socius enables the monetization of this content through custom native ads, enhancing the digital advertising landscape for both publishers and advertisers.
Social Media Broadcasts (SMB) Limited ("SMB") is a Hong Kong-based big data analytics company focused on developing innovative and sophisticated software-as-a-service ("SaaS") technologies to transform social big data into reliable and actionable intelligence for marketers and professionals. Big data analytics enables organisations to analyse a mix of structured, semi-structured and unstructured data to provide valuable business information and insights. SMB's unique positioning is a combination of 1) extensive experience with online and mobile social architectures and technologies, 2) deep understanding of Asian and Western social behaviours and 3) innovative integration of analytical methodologies. The company's leading solution is Klarity - a cloud-based, online dashboard-styled tool that provides social monitoring and listening analytics for enterprises, advertising agencies and governments to measure performance, benchmark against competition, identify trends and gain insights into behaviour. Klarity enables marketers, professionals and analysts to leverage social big data in an efficient and effective manner. The proprietary engine crawls social platforms, mobile channels and influencer networks to track, collect, store and manage granular data. Sophisticated algorithms then segments, refines and interprets the information in a quantitative and qualitative manner to automatically present metrics and analyses through a user-friendly dashboard. SMB successfully launched the first generation of Klarity in mid-2013, which quickly gained positive feedback from both enterprises and advertising agencies. Since then, it has evolved from simply monitoring analytics from social profiles to a complex monitoring and listening tool, drawing on big data from social platforms (from Facebook to Sina Weibo), mobile channels (such as LINE and WeChat) and influencer networks (such as news sites, forums and blogs). Today, Klarity v2.4 has gained recognition and validation from major global brands and multinational clients. Beyond Klarity 2.4, SMB's corporate objective is to broaden Klarity's analytical capabilities to provide an even more advanced and holistic SaaS solution for a wider spectrum of verticals to significantly improve insights - applicable not only towards marketing strategies but also financial analysis, healthcare monitoring, crisis management and predictive forecasting. SMB has a core staff of 12 full-time employees comprising of management, technical and marketing professionals. The team is complimented by notable strategic partners such as Hootsuite, Softbank C&S and HP Hong Kong. Management is further supported by seasoned consultants and advisors with financial, technical and marketing expertise.

Socialight

Seed Round in 2014
Socialight the company behind a platform that enables local content publishers and communities to create their own mobile applications. Founded in 2005 by Melinger and fellow graduates of New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, businesses use Socialight’s self-serve platform to design and launch apps around location-based content. The company has powered mobile and web solutions for top brands such as Ford Motor Company, Travel Channel, and NBC Universal with its scalable, white-label platform.

Connected2Me

Seed Round in 2014
Connected2Me is a global messaging platform based in Turkey that has over 25 million registered users. The platform features a web chat application that connects registered profiles with anonymous site visitors, allowing users to communicate without revealing their identities. This unique anonymity feature sets Connected2Me apart from other messaging platforms, contributing to its viral growth in user acquisition. By prioritizing privacy and anonymity, Connected2Me offers a distinctive approach to online communication, appealing to users seeking a secure messaging experience.

Shakr.com

Venture Round in 2014
Shakr.com is an online video making platform developed by Shakr Media Co., Ltd., which was founded in 2010 and is based in Seoul, South Korea. The platform allows users to seamlessly transform their multimedia content from the cloud and social media into professional-quality videos. Shakr has established itself as a leader in creative technology for video marketing, supporting hundreds of thousands of marketers globally in adapting to the video-centric landscape of social media. By leveraging top creative talent, Shakr enhances users' creative capabilities while maintaining high-quality standards. The company is also recognized as a Facebook Marketing Partner, underscoring its commitment to effective video marketing solutions.

Shakr.com

Series A in 2014
Shakr.com is an online video making platform developed by Shakr Media Co., Ltd., which was founded in 2010 and is based in Seoul, South Korea. The platform allows users to seamlessly transform their multimedia content from the cloud and social media into professional-quality videos. Shakr has established itself as a leader in creative technology for video marketing, supporting hundreds of thousands of marketers globally in adapting to the video-centric landscape of social media. By leveraging top creative talent, Shakr enhances users' creative capabilities while maintaining high-quality standards. The company is also recognized as a Facebook Marketing Partner, underscoring its commitment to effective video marketing solutions.

ZootRock

Seed Round in 2014
ZootRock provides social media management tools. The company provides an online tool that enables users to generate relevant trending content to increase engagement and followers on social media. Its solution helps people and businesses manage their social media content by posting curated tweets and Facebook posts on their behalf. The company is based in Australia.

Tapestry

Seed Round in 2014
Official Twitter feed for http://t.co/3Csf62O4, the easiest way to stay connected to your family without worrying about technology.

ALL DAY

Seed Round in 2013
All Day is building an editorial media brand and publishing technology for mobile-first Millennial audiences. The company leverages a network of owned and partner Social Media properties for content distribution and audience engagement, driving content sharing and virality. All Day’s network partners, writers, and editors manage posts, track analytics, and grow engagement through its CMS and Social distribution dashboard. Today, All Day maintains and engages a growing audience on Social Media channels through owned and operated content brands with over 28 million followers, as well as a distribution network reaching over 200 million followers across Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Included among the company’s more popular social accounts are HistoryinPics and EarthPix on Twitter. Through these owned and partner accounts, All Day distributes highly visual and shareable editorial content, which is often featured on its destination site AllDay.com.

Populr

Seed Round in 2013
Populr is a communication tool that allows you to easily create & share trackable, one page websites via a drag and drop interface. ★ Visual editor With a drag & drop interface, users can create one-pagers with rich media such as text, images, video recordings, files, and embeddable services. (youtube, jotform, slideshare etc.) ★ Track views & clicks Know if your target audience engaged with your message. Stay on top of sales leads, deliver a proposal, train a new hire, and refine your marketing communications. ★ Collaborate with your team Co-edit pages with a team or get input from others ★ Personalize your messages instantly ★ Publish under your own domains

ChatCenter AI

Seed Round in 2013
ChatCenter AI offers a comprehensive API designed for mobile application developers to enhance customer acquisition and monitor viral metrics. Founded in 2013 and based in Mountain View, California, the company provides tools that enable developers to seamlessly integrate referral and invitation features into their applications. With user-friendly drag-and-drop functionality and a robust dashboard, developers can optimize their viral marketing strategies by personalizing landing pages and conducting A/B tests. The API boasts impressive performance metrics, including a click-through rate exceeding 20% from customized landing pages to app stores and a conversion rate of over 30% for signups from invitations sent. ChatCenter AI addresses a critical challenge for app developers by facilitating effective customer engagement and acquisition.

TrueLens

Venture Round in 2012
TrueLens specializes in analyzing Socialgraphic data to enhance marketing strategies for prominent brands, including Adidas and Neiman Marcus. By leveraging insights from customer interactions and behaviors, TrueLens aims to help businesses better understand their target audiences and improve engagement. The company focuses on influencer marketing and content promotion, providing tools that enable brands to drive more effective results in their marketing efforts. Through comprehensive data analysis, TrueLens assists clients in optimizing their marketing initiatives to connect more effectively with customers and prospects.

Social Tools

Seed Round in 2012
Social Tools is a Social Marketing Suite, that enables Agencies and Marketers to run low-cost promotions and contests on Facebook. Social Tools allows brands to build and Run any kind of promotion such as sweepstakes, image contest, coupons, giveaways, and much more, on any Facebook page, website or mobile device, on a very easy way. Social Tools enables brands grow their social audience, engage consumers, and drive sales reducing the CPA and increasing the ROI in Social Media.

femeninas

Seed Round in 2012
femeninas.com is a social engagement platform for women and fashion User generated content with the users gets rewards for uploading content, and where designers and brands can interact with the community.

Twitmusic

Seed Round in 2012
Twitmusic is the leading Twitter marketing platform for the music industry. SaaS solution enables music artists & labels to launch campaigns to help them grow their followers, go Trending and reach new audiences on Twitter. In addition, they provide labels with actionable insights & analytics to determine the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. - Registered musicians: 44,000 (with 500,000,000+ followers). - Artist sign up up 200% annually - Registered Artists: Lil Wayne, Jason Mraz, Bryan Adams, Duran Duran, Carly Rae Jepsen, Sean Kingston, Steve Aoki, The Lumineers, Cody Simpson, Cher Lloyd, MC Hammer, Brandy, Muse, Jon Secada, Amanda Palmer, Asher Roth, Miguel & many more. - Partners: Sony, Warner Music, Universal, EMI, Def Jam, Epic Records, RCA, Columbia Records, Tool Room Records, RED Music, Scooter Braun Projects, CAA, Atom Factory, Stricly Rythme, Bill Silva, Hashtag Mgmt, Stampede Mgmt & many more.

Teamly

Seed Round in 2012
In Spring 2013 Teamly launched its new Social Performance Management product for enterprise social networks. Available now inside TIBCO’s tibbr Marketplace its possible to manage reviews, goals, recognition, tasks and projects.

Shareaholic

Seed Round in 2011
Shareaholic, Inc. offers a content amplification platform designed to enhance the discovery, engagement, and sharing of relevant content for marketers, publishers, and site owners. By enabling website owners to showcase pertinent content, the platform helps increase pageviews, user engagement, and time spent on their sites. Shareaholic also facilitates the sharing of various activities, such as articles and purchases, across multiple social media channels including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. In addition to these features, the platform provides actionable metrics that offer insights into content performance and audience interactions. With a user base exceeding 300,000 websites, Shareaholic serves customers globally and was founded in 2008, with its headquarters located in Boston, Massachusetts.

BackType

Seed Round in 2011
BackType is a marketing intelligence platform that helps brands and agencies understand the business impact of social media. BackType also powers social features for over 100 companies, including The New York Times, Slideshare, Automattic (creators of WordPress), Bit.ly and more.

Symphony

Seed Round in 2011
Symphony is a social media management tool for businesses that use images on social networks. It helps businesses manage their social media presence - beautifully and quickly. Paid product for SMBs & agencies.

Ninua

Seed Round in 2011
Ninua builds social media applications: Symphony Tools helps businesses manage their social media presence. And, NetworkedBlogs, with 1M+ registered blogs, helps bloggers grow their reach on social networks.

Flowtown

Seed Round in 2010
Flowtown is a social media marketing platform designed to assist businesses in converting email contacts into engaged customers. By leveraging openly shared information from popular social networks, Flowtown provides an accessible tool that facilitates effective communication between businesses and their clients. The platform has successfully served over 15,000 businesses, enabling them to foster growth and establish strong, loyal relationships with their customers.

Wildfire

Series A in 2010
Wildfire was acquired by Google in 2012, is the global leader in social media marketing software, with over 21,000 paying customers worldwide, including 30 of the world's 50 most valuable brands. It currently serves as its own entity. Wildfire's Social Marketing Suite combines best-of-breed social promotion and advertising software, robust mobile and desktop page management, messaging and sophisticated real-time analytics in one complete platform. Wildfire's powerful and intuitive software allows creative marketers and non-technical managers alike to create social campaigns and pages, communicate with their social audience and measure social media performance. Brands and agencies such as Facebook, Virgin, Amazon, Target and Ogilvy as well as thousands of small businesses use the Wildfire platform to engage with audiences on major social networks, including Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter. The only social media marketing company to receive an investment from Facebook's fbFund, Wildfire has offices in California, Chicago, New York, London, Paris, Munich, and Singapore. For more information, visit www.wildfireapp.com.