Israeli start-up Music Messenger, which provides apps allowing music to be messaged to friends, is about to complete a finance raising round of $30 million. The investment funds are from a range of prominent investors at a company value of $100 million, sources inform “Globes.”
Music Messenger’s CEO, which operates from Kibbutz Glil Yam, is serial entrepreneur Oded Kobo (known abroad as OD Kobo), the son of international businessman Bebo Kobo.
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Oded Kobo hit the international headlines recently when he told “Forbes, ” :“We aim to improve the way music is shared. If we can make it as easy to message a song as it is to text message, then the possibilities are staggering.”
Kobo founded Music Messenger in 2014 with Shai Azran, David Strauss, and Uzi Refaeli. This will be the company’s second financing round after Music Messenger raised $5 million in August at a company value of $25 million.
Music Messenger’s app has successfully created a huge buzz in the music world and a long list of key figures has jumped on the bandwagon. Investors include David Guetta, Nicki Minaj, Tiesto, will.i.am, and Coldplay’s David Holmes and many others.
Strauss said in a recent interview, “It’s really cool that so many celebrities that have never before worked with an Israeli company are determined to invest. We’re happy that the music industry and Israeli high-tech are finally cooperating.”
Music Messenger does not store music in its servers but allows users to send songs that they have previously downloaded to their smartphone or alternatively to share music from the company’s library, which is an aggregate of libraries like YouTube or SoundCloud, Yahoo and others.
This is not Kobo’s first Internet start-up success. In September 2014, he sold Pheed to Moshe Hogeg’s Mobli for an estimated $20-40 million. Pheed developed a mobile social network, which gained five million users with a pioneering concept of content monetization.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news – www.globes-online.com
