California start-up GumGum has closed a Series A-1 financing round with $2.6 million in new financing from GRP Venture Partners and First Round Capital.
GRP led the round. Mark Suster will be joining the GumGum board of directors. In addition to GumGum foundes Ari Mir and Ophir Tanz, the board also includes Michael Jones (Userplane, AOL, Tsavo, MySpace), Howard Morgan of First Round Capital and Brian Garret of Crosscut Ventures. David Sacks (PayPal, Geni and Yammer) and Vince Thompson (AOL, Facebook) sit on the GumGum advisory board.
Launched early last year, GumGum specializes in ad-supported and pay-per-use image licensing. Though it appears to be in head-to-head competition with PicApp, the ad-supported licensing spin-off of Israeli company PicScout, there are some indications that GumGum may be emerging in front—perhaps because GumGum has been substantially more open than its rival with financial information, network traffic and usage statistics.
According to Quantcast, GumGum is currently a Top 20 network reaching over 50 million unique visitors. It is the only company to offer pay-per-use online image licensing. It has also experimented with a range of new image-based online products, such as the March launch of ShopThisLook.
According to Tanz, “This new round of funding will enable GumGum to continue to drive cost-saving solutions around licensing, as well as drive new revenue opportunities to its publishing partners.”