Founded June 2013 (2013-06) Website prizeo.com | Owner Todd Wagner | |
Industry Celebrity charitable crowd funding Founders Bryan Baum, Leo Seigal, Andrej Pancik Headquarters Los Angeles, California, United States | ||
Prizeo is a privately owned internet company based in Los Angeles, California. It is an online fundraising platform that enables clients to mobilize their fan bases to raise funds and awareness for their chosen causes. Prizeo takes a 20% commission on the funds it raises.
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In June 2015, it was announced that Prizeo had been acquired by tech mogul Todd Wagner. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
History
As undergraduates at Oxford University, co-founders Bryan Baum and Leo Seigal worked with the Aloysius Society, a philanthropic group that organized high-priced charity events. The society raised $1 million running auctions, but Baum and Seigal were frustrated at the cost of their fundraising strategy and the lack of scale. In 2012 the duo teamed up with co-founder Andrej Pancik and Lukas Bosko to create Prizeo, a fundraising website with a raffle-type model.
In January 2013, Prizeo participated in the technology start-up incubator Y Combinator’s Winter 2013 program.
In June 2013, Prizeo announced a $2.5 million seed funding round led by Battery Ventures. Other investors in the round included William Morris Endeavor, Edgar Bronfman, Jr., and ZhenFund (Sequoia Capital’s seed fund in China).
In August 2014, the co-founders launched an offshoot platform, the crowd-funded merchandise platform Represent.com, which they went on to sell to CustomInk for a reported $100M.
Campaigns
Since launching, the platform has held nearly 200 crowdfunding campaigns featuring celebrity experiences and raising over $10M for over 100 different charities.
Some of the influencers who have run fundraising campaigns on Prizeo include:
Press
Prizeo has been featured in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes, TechCrunch, Mashable, and The Hollywood Reporter, among others.
During his tenure as CEO, Prizeo co-founder Bryan Baum was named to Forbes' "30 Under 30" 2014 list in the category "Social Entrepreneurs". In the same year, co-founder Andrej Pancik was featured on the front cover of Forbes Slovakia.
Co-founder Leo Seigal has been featured in The Guardian and The Telegraph in their respective articles on British entrepreneurs who have relocated to the US West Coast.