Kapost Press Release Jan. 2012

1. ---- PRESS RELEASE ----
Kapost Closes $1.5M in New Financing
Funding will Position the Company to Lead the Content Marketing Space
BOULDER, COLO – JANUARY 12, 2012 – Today Kapost, Inc. is announcing that it has
closed $1.5 million in new financing. The funding will allow the company to extend its
existing content publishing platform beyond media companies to brands - effectively
giving marketers the tools to become publishers themselves. The Series B round of
funding is led by Circle P Capital and includes existing investors Highway 12 Ventures
and High Country Venture.
Kapost was co-founded by Toby Murdock (CEO), Mike Lewis (President) and Nadar
Akhnoukh (CTO) in April 2010. The company’s content publishing technology allows any
brand to take on the functions of a publisher, including content idea generation,
contributor management, editorial calendar and assignments, content distribution to
CMS and social platforms and analytics tracking.
The cash infusion will enable Kapost to update their technology and launch the
industry’s first Content Marketing Platform. Kapost sales, marketing and business
development efforts will be refocused on helping brands to succeed in content
marketing.
“Brands have always delivered their messages through publishers but that game is
quickly changing. We see billions of dollars of brand marketing budgets moving quickly
into content marketing,” said Chase Fraser, managing partner at Circle P Capital.
“Kapost is a triple threat. They have the team, technology and experience that uniquely
positions them to take the nascent content marketing world by storm.”
Chase Fraser will join Mark Solon from Highway 12 Ventures and Chris Marks from High
Country Ventures on the company’s Board of Directors. Also joining as an Independent
Director is Luke Beatty, founder of Associated Content (acquired by Yahoo) and current
Vice President and General Manager at Yahoo.
Market Opportunity
Traditionally brands have reached customers by buying advertising on media publisher
properties. However, the effectiveness of “bought media” is declining:

2. Consumers are recoiling from excessive advertising
Consumers have control (Tivo, DVR, pop-up blockers, etc.)
The metrics from online ads show just how poorly ads perform (avg. click
through rate is <1%)
One giant step has been the development of “earned media” whereby marketers earn
coverage from others, i.e. mentions on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Software platforms like Buddy Media and Vitrue have powered this trend. Buddy Media
recently raised $54M on a $500M valuation. Another related software space is
Marketing Automation to manage the maturation of leads that come from a brand’s
website. Leading Marketing Automation firms are having great financial success of late:
Marketo raised $50M and is growing $35M year in revenue. Eloqua filed for a $100M
IPO.
The next stage is “owned media” whereby marketers are producing their own content
and generating their own audiences. In order to become publishers, however, brands
need to have the infrastructure of the content production and distribution process. This
is all new to them forcing a ramp-up rate from zero to 60 in a hurry. Kapost is poised to
give brands the needed infrastructure to become content marketers. Co-founders
Murdock, Lewis and Akhnoukh believe the company can achieve similar successes to
Buddy Media in social media marketing and Marketo and Eloqua in marketing
automation.
Why Kapost is Poised to Own Content Marketing Space
In September 2010, Kapost raised a $1.1 million Series A round led by High Country
Venture and Highway 12 Venture, with Zelkova Ventures, Kal Vepuri, Tango, David Tisch,
Jason Kiefer, and David Cohen participating. The first round of funding enabled the
company to build the world’s leading content production platform, serving leading
media publications such as Mashable, CBS, Time Inc. Gannett and The Discovery
Channel.
“We’ve spent the last year engineering a product to streamline the newsroom process
for journalists. With the injection of funding we are taking that experience and
knowledge of the media industry and launching the Kapost Content Marketing
Platform,” says Murdock, CEO of Kapost, Inc. “This uniquely positions us to own the
content marketing space and transform the way brands reach their customers online.”
Kapost already has traction in the content marketing space with brand customers on
board including L’Oreal (NASDAQ: LRLCY), TripAdvisor (NASDAQ: TRIP) and Parametric
Technology Corporation (PTC) (NASDAQ: PMTC).
New Software Release
In late-January 2012, Kapost will release significantupgrades to its existing online
newsroom platform for media customers to fully optimize its technology for use by

3. Content Marketers. Highlights will include an enterprise user-interface, additional
distribution points beyond CMS platforms (e.g. WordPress) to include social platforms,
and an enhanced workflow for brands to keep pace with the process required to be a
successful publisher.
About Kapost
The Kapost Content Marketing Platform enables companies to efficiently produce more
compelling content, grow traffic and sales. Kapost’s platform features include: the
ability to generate quality content ideas, effectively manage the content production and
distribution process, drive traffic through influencer relationships and make better
decisions from insightful analytics. Customers include: L’Oreal, TripAdvisor, Fortune and
The Discovery Channel. Kapost is located in Boulder, CO. Learn more at
www.kapost.com and follow them on Twitter @Kapost.
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Press Contact: Courtney Walsh, courtney@mediadarlingpr.com, 303-875-9007