Letter, a platform that enables brands to manage and service marketing agency projects, announced today that it has raised $16 million in a Series A round (an undisclosed portion of which was debt) led by Greycroft with participation from BDMI, UTA.VC, Afterpay’s Touch Ventures, and The House Fund at UC Berkeley. The new capital brings Breef’s total raised to $21 million, which co-founder and CEO George Raptis says will go toward continuing to develop the company’s product and increasing the size of Breef’s workforce from 30 people to about 60. by 2024.
“Breef’s most recent funding will be used to continue to evolve its product offering (a new ‘from the ground up’ platform will be launched with the funding announcement) and grow its global team, announcing its first international bases in the UK Kingdom and Australia”. Raptis told TechCrunch via email. “The company will also invest more in its payment infrastructure, enabling structured payments for brands looking to ‘grow now, pay later.’”
Breef was co-founded in 2019 by Emily Bibb and Raptis. Bibb previously worked at in-house advertising and marketing agencies, as well as startups like PopSugar and VSCO. Meanwhile, Raptis helped launch Credible.com, the online lending marketplace that Fox acquired in 2019.
Both Bibb and Raptis attribute their desire to start Breef to a change in the way agencies work. Full-time hires and the “big agency” model were no longer flexible (or affordable) enough to meet the demands of today’s brands, they felt, while outsourcing-related challenges skyrocketed.
“The agency space has traditionally been a relationship-first business. The nature of the work is long, with brands embarking on a months-long search process despite inaccurate and often untargeted ‘scopes’, hence the rise of the ’boutique agency’.” Raptis said. “But the technology hadn’t been created to vet and centralize agencies and give brands confidence across the search… In short, if someone could centralize agencies and help brands move faster, then the ‘old way’ of working with agencies would be ready to be replaced. .”
Breef’s online agency search marketplace. Image Credits: Letter
Breef, Raptis says, accomplishes this by offering a way to start finding, hiring, and paying for agencies in one place. Breef, an “agency marketplace,” allows brands to plan, reach, and publish digital marketing, social media, PR campaigns, web and app development, and branding projects to get agency pitches on the platform. Brands can select a team and launch projects, manage contracts and payments from a dedicated dashboard.
Raptis claims that over 10,000 agencies and thousands of brands are on Breef, with turnaround times for releases ranging from a couple of days to around a week.
“For both brands and agencies, using technology as a way to qualify and connect with the right partners is a game changer,” said Raptis. “Breef also levels the playing field for companies that might not otherwise have the opportunity to work together, often a point of contention for smaller agencies, minority-led agencies, and newcomers, who now have the opportunity. to work with some of the biggest brands in the world.”
Breef certainly seems to be gaining ground (at least the way Raptis tells it), with brands like Netflix, Heineken, Spotify, Pantone and Free People recently joining the platform. Towards the end of 2022, the company achieved a major milestone: $100 million worth of projects built on the platform, and signed partnerships with expense automation platform Ramp, venue rental marketplace Peerspace, and business marketplace Newity.
Raptis did not answer questions about Breef’s revenue, except that the company grew “10 times” last year, a vague number to be sure. But he expressed confidence in the startup’s growth trajectory, despite competition from startups like BizBulwark (which offers a similar marketing marketplace) and Agency Spotter (an ad agency search tool).
“For marketers, Breef means ease of planning, scoping and outsourcing, at the speed modern brands require. And what is most important, access to diverse talent, with innovative ideas”, said Raptis. “For CFOs, it means centralizing marketing spend through market transparency, payment flexibility, and contract standardization. For creative and boutique agencies, it means the opportunity to work with leading brands without the need for an in-house sales team. It also means security and transparency around payments and contracts.”
Greycroft investor Ali Schleider isn’t the most impartial source, of course, he agreed.
“The amount of demand we are seeing from brands and agencies flowing through the platform shows that companies are looking for a new way to get creative work done,” he said. “Our belief is that Breef is not just repositioning marketing spend, but creating an accessible solution for quality talent, regardless of market conditions.”
