Daily Grommet Raises $3.4 Million

The Daily Grommet just hit the daily double. The Lexington, MA-based startup, which scouts out consumer products from colorful, progressive, relatively unknown manufacturers and promotes one such “grommet” each day through online videos, announced today that it has closed the first tranche of its Series A funding round at $3.4 million. Existing investors LaunchCapital and Gerry Laybourne, founder of Nickelodeon and Oxygen Media, were on board for the A round, and were joined by new investors Jean Hammond of Hub Angels and Launchpad Venture Group, John Landry of Lead Dog Ventures, Nancy Peretsman, and Jill Preotle of Boston Golden Seeds. “Daily Grommet is attacking an enormous market opportunity in a David vs. Goliath way,” Landry said in a statement. “This is already a totally disruptive story-using social technologies to blow up the old models of product discovery and distribution.” Xconomy profiled the Daily Grommet in July 2009 and published an extended interview with founder and CEO Jules Pieri in August 2009.

Author: Wade Roush

Between 2007 and 2014, I was a staff editor for Xconomy in Boston and San Francisco. Since 2008 I've been writing a weekly opinion/review column called VOX: The Voice of Xperience. (From 2008 to 2013 the column was known as World Wide Wade.) I've been writing about science and technology professionally since 1994. Before joining Xconomy in 2007, I was a staff member at MIT’s Technology Review from 2001 to 2006, serving as senior editor, San Francisco bureau chief, and executive editor of TechnologyReview.com. Before that, I was the Boston bureau reporter for Science, managing editor of supercomputing publications at NASA Ames Research Center, and Web editor at e-book pioneer NuvoMedia. I have a B.A. in the history of science from Harvard College and a PhD in the history and social study of science and technology from MIT. I've published articles in Science, Technology Review, IEEE Spectrum, Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Technology and Culture, Alaska Airlines Magazine, and World Business, and I've been a guest of NPR, CNN, CNBC, NECN, WGBH and the PBS NewsHour. I'm a frequent conference participant and enjoy opportunities to moderate panel discussions and on-stage chats. My personal site: waderoush.com My social media coordinates: Twitter: @wroush Facebook: facebook.com/wade.roush LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/waderoush Google+ : google.com/+WadeRoush YouTube: youtube.com/wroush1967 Flickr: flickr.com/photos/wroush/ Pinterest: pinterest.com/waderoush/