Mark Bao + Onswipe, NYC based OnSwipe has just raised a $5 million series A round led by Spark Capital and joined by Lightbank, Yuri Milner, Lerer Ventures, Betaworks, SV Angel, Morado Ventures, Thrive Capital, and ENIAC Ventures. The round, referred to as a “Series Awesome” will be used to keep up with overwhelming demand from both publishers and advertisers and nearly double its current team.
“We realized what we are building is a larger opportunity than we ever thought while growing at a breakneck speed. In order to own the market we went out and raised a Series Awesome from the best group of investors possible that share our goal of world domination” said Jason L. Baptiste, CEO and cofounder. “And yes…the legal docs actually say Series Awesome,” he added.

Just back in January at the start of the Techstars NYC program OnSswipe raised a $1 million seed deal led by Spark Capital, Betaworks and ENIAC Ventures. HubSpot CTO Dharmesh Shah, Jennifer Lum, Roy Rodenstein, and Wayne Chang participated as angel investors.

OnSwipe is planning to formerly launch this summer on June 21st.

OnSwipe, formerly PadPressed was founded by Jason Baptiste as a way to create content specifically catered for the tablet or iPad market. Baptiste is also a blogger for Dharmesh’s blog OnStartups.com. Baptiste has also contributed to BostInnovation during a featured series. Recently, ThreeWords.me founder Mark Bao joined OnSwipe as CTO.

Curious about just how real and big this tablet market is? We recently recapped data points from Boston’s market research firms around mobile, and here are some quick reference points:

• 17M tablets were shipped in 2010, with 45M projected to ship in 2011 and 71M in 2012 (IDC)

• Global tablet device revenues will increase from $16B in 2010 to $46B in 2014 (Yankee Group)

• Annual tablet sales will more than triple between 2010 and 2015 at a CAGR of 31%, from 8M units shipped to 30M (Yankee Group)

“Demand for Onswipe has been incredible. Publishers are finally able to provide the volume, scale and analytics that advertisers have so desperately sought but have never been able to receive from the content iPad apps. Series Awesome not only allows us to cater to more publishers and advertisers, but we are able to faster than ever,” commented Andres Barreto, co-founder and president.

The name OnSwipe refers to the method of interaction between humans and a tablet, where computers are interacted with a click, tablets are done with a swipe.


Source: bostinnovation