AdTech startup POCKLA has today announced it has raised £1.6 million to scale its proprietary AI-powered content strategy and creation platform in a seed funding round led by Venrex. Other high-profile investors and advisors joining the round include The Sidemen's VC arm Upside Ventures, Love Ventures, Shuttle, and Syndicate Room, plus a wealth of industry heavyweights including Rich Waterworth, formerly at TikTok, Dan Cobley, previously Head of Google UK/Ireland, and Michael Chock and Ryan Quinn, formerly at MiQ.
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From left to right: Rupert Boddington and Hugo Bibby
POCKLA's vision to help marketers and brands create like the world's best content creators brought YouTube's biggest group, Sidemen, to the table as investors and partners. With over 146 million subscribers, the British YouTube group is rewriting the content playbook, driving massive commercial success with multiple consumer brands and now venture capital.
POCKLA was born out of co-founders Hugo and Rupert's recognition of the shift in modern media and a new medium of dominant content. Social platforms are driven by genuine, interactive, and authentic exchanges between creators and their communities, with 73% of consumers preferring short-form video when exploring products or services. Authentic exchanges captivate audiences through entertainment or inspiration, pushing traditional, product-centric messaging to the sidelines as social algorithms and users prioritise authenticity.
A large swathe of brands require greater knowledge of the processes, mechanisms, and expertise to navigate this new medium of communication. Doing this authentically is challenging, which has been seen with the backlash larger corporate brands have received when trying to threadjack cultural moments and trends.
POCKLA bridges this gap by helping brands find their "internet voice" and identify topics and conversations their audience truly cares about with its combination of human strategy and LLM AI-driven rather than keyword-based approach. These insights then drive POCKLA's content engine, which takes brands quickly from strategy to delivery of authentic, impactful content that helps them lead conversations and build genuine community engagement.
The London-based adtech business will use the funding to accelerate its product development and expand its team to empower brands and content creators to thrive in today's fast-paced digital landscape.
Speaking about the investment, Sam Uwins, Director of Sidemen Entertainment Limited said: "We back businesses that are building the future of marketing. POCKLA is doing just that, helping brands to move with the speed of social media and build engaged audiences which we believe is the secret to growth."
POCKLA was launched in 2022 by Hugo Bibby and Rupert Boddington, who previously were part of the founding team of OPUS, a high-growth community of some of the UK's most talented entrepreneurs. OPUS has now expanded to the US, UAE and South Africa, and includes Princess Beatrice, former Multichoice CEO Chair Imtiaz Patel and co-founder of WeWork Miguel McKelvey as part of its founding Board.
"We're thrilled to invest in Pockla, which is reinventing brand engagement in the age of modern media. Combining cutting-edge AI technology with creativity, they are helping brands excel in a dynamic and competitive digital landscape. The team's unwavering obsession with product and demonstrated ability to execute quickly made investing an easy decision.
We're also excited to leverage our experience from other successful B2B investments, such as Opus Energy and Maven Clinic, to support Pockla in its growth journey," said Alistair Russell, Venture Investor at Venrex.
"Brands aren't just competing with each other, but also against every other piece of content on a consumer's social feed. Given the vast majority of this content is designed purely to entertain consumers, marketers have their work cut out trying to cut through the noise week in, week out," said Rupert Boddington, Co-Founder of POCKLA
This latest round of funding takes POCKLA's total funding raised to date to £2m.
"We're thrilled to secure this funding which marks a pivotal step in POCKLA's journey, said Hugo Bibby, Co-Founder of POCKLA. "The team is excited to help brands open up a medium of communication with customers that is hard to access authentically. This is all made possible with the backing of industry titans like the Sidemen, Venrex, Love Ventures and our other incredibly supportive investors."
About POCKLA
POCKLA is a London-based adtech business founded in 2022 by Hugo Bibby and Rupert Boddington that supercharges in-house human creatives with their content strategy and creation platform disrupting the social listening space. The company's AI-powered technology with human-overlay helps marketers to consistently create content that captures the attention of audiences by simulating the emotions, experiences and psyche of a typical customer for their business, and tapping into the moments and conversations in their lives that matter to them. POCKLA's vision is to help marketers and brands create like the world's best content creators.
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