Yapert Steps into Limelight with $1.2M, Mobile Celebrity App Watcher

San Diego-based Yapert says it has raised $1.2 million in seed funding from Southern California’s Tech Coast Angels to roll out its social media mobile app for celebrity pix and vids.

The startup raised $500,000 when it was founded last year, and the latest infusion brings total funding to $1.7 million. Yapert plans to use the new funding to expand its technology platform and for sales and marketing.

Yapert says it is tapping the multi-billion dollar entertainment media industry to provide real-time social media updates for mobile users. The startup aggregates visual content and light news headlines that mostly feature personalities from film, television, music, fashion, lifestyle, sports, and health and fitness. In a statement last week, Yapert says fans can customize the app through a “favorites” option and get alerts when there is new content or a message from or about the celebs they follow most closely.

Yapert "Trending Now" Screenshot

Yapert says it intends to partner with media companies, consumer brands, and prominent entertainers to offer exclusive contests and behind-the-scenes content.

Yapert’s founder and CEO is Phil Kelly, a former Motorola and Dell Computer executive who spent most of his career in Asia. His expertise on best business practices in Asia led him to write the 2001 business book Asia360: The Culture of Building Businesses in Asia. Co-founders include Rick Cooper, an engineering executive and board member of the San Diego Tech Coast Angels, and Michael Young, a veteran software developer who worked previously at Redfin, Microsoft, and Plumtree Software.

The company also has recruited media veteran Karina Paje, whose background includes some work in digital strategies and marketing for music artists at Warner and Nettwerk Music Group.

The Yapert app is available for free at the Apple Store, and the company says it is beta testing an app for the Android operating system.

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.