Verve Raises $7M, Studies Mobile ‘Paradox’ for Old Media Customers

Verve Wireless has raised at least $7 million from investors in a new round of financing, according to a recent regulatory filing. Verve, which has headquarters both in Encinitas, CA, and Washington, D.C., also is addressing a fundamental challenge as it builds out its Web-based technology, which enables regional newspapers, broadcast stations, and other media companies to offer their local news and advertising to a variety of smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices.

“We are in the middle of a raise,” confirms Greg Hallinan, Verve’s chief marketing officer. But Hallinan would not discuss details of Verve’s latest funding round, at least not at this time. Based on $3.5 million in funding disclosed last year and $12 million that Verve raised during the first five years, the company has gone to the well for at least $22.5 million in startup capital since it was founded in 2005.

Verve is still expanding, which is a topic that Hallinan was happy to discuss. He says Verve’s combined network of media customers is registering 91 million unique U.S. visitors per month. Verve also has expanded its headcount to 50 employees in three cities—Encinitas (where co-founder and president Tom Kenney is based), Washington, D.C., (where CEO Tom MacIsaac is based), and New York (where much of the U.S. advertising industry is based).

As robust as that sounds, Hallinan says the market for mobile media content remains particularly challenging, and Verve has been conducting a series of studies in an effort to

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.