On Monday, Clipbook, an AI-powered platform that helps firms monitor their media protection, introduced a $3 million seed spherical co-led by Mark Cuban, Commonweal Ventures, and Carpenter Capital.
The deal occurred as a result of Clipbook’s founder, Adam Joseph, took an extended shot with a chilly electronic mail that he by no means thought anybody would learn, he instructed TechCrunch.
Joseph launched Clipbook in 2023 and bootstrapped it to one million {dollars} in annual recurring income, he stated. At that time, a couple of yr in the past, he felt he was prepared to search out buyers.
“I literally made a list of the top five media investors in the world,” Joseph recalled. His product makes use of AI to assist firms monitor what the world says about them and their opponents within the press, throughout podcasts, and in social media. So he wished buyers who understood that scene.
Mark Cuban, who has based media networks, starred on “Shark Tank,” written books, produced motion pictures, and is recurrently interviewed on TV, was on the high of Joseph’s listing.
So, one night in late 2024, Joseph drank a beer for braveness and despatched a one-page funding pitch through chilly electronic mail to everybody on the listing. No heat intro.
Cuban, alone, answered. It seems, busy and inundated with pitches as he’s, Cuban nonetheless scans his personal emails. He’s at all times searching for his subsequent deal. “I have literally invested tens of millions of dollars from emails, and a lot of them have paid off, turned into unicorns,” Cuban tells TechCrunch about why he answered Clipbook.
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However earlier than Cuban cracked open his checkbook, he put Joseph by way of a collection of assessments. His first electronic mail response “was the most skeptical 20 questions that he could ever ask,” Joseph recalled.
Cuban admits he’s pretty well-known for that from “Shark Tank.”
“When I start to pepper them, they wilt, right? They wilt or they get angry at a certain level,” Cuban defined. “It’s their baby. They don’t like to be questioned, yeah? But Adam was just like, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.”
After answering each query to Cuban’s satisfaction, the billionaire then requested Joseph to show the product by producing a report for Cuban’s personal child: CostPlus Medicine. That’s an internet pharmacy and public profit company he co-founded in 2022 that costs medicine affordably at price plus 15%.
“I know what a pain in the ass it is to do the research for PR and for marketing, and to learn about [competitor] companies, and to find out what people are saying about your own company,” Cuban defined.
Not that Clipbook doesn’t have loads of opponents that additionally do that work. Sprinklr is among the many greatest identified, however others embrace Sprout Social, Emplify, Hootsuite, and extra.
Joseph contends that Clipbook is completely different as a result of it was constructed from the bottom as much as be AI native. Which means it doesn’t simply scan for key phrases, but it surely understands the context of how these phrases are used. It is aware of that media references to “cost” and “drugs” is just not the identical as searching for CostPlus Medicine. It is aware of the distinction between any particular person named “Adam Joseph” and the one who’s the founding father of Clipbook.
Being AI-native (not an AI bolt-on) additionally helps it search the place different merchandise battle to go, similar to audio and video references in podcasts, Joseph contends. He constructed this product after doing PR work for Boston Consulting Group and so skilled the ache of media sentiment analysis firsthand, he stated.
Joseph speedily produced the report for Cuban that actually “nailed” related references, Cuban says. He was particularly impressed when it unearthed a beforehand unknown podcast dialog about pharmacy profit companies.
After just a few days of negotiating, Cuban agreed to ship Joseph a time period sheet. The primary a part of that seed spherical closed in early 2025 and different buyers piled in over the subsequent few months.
Joseph declined to share up to date ARR figures with TechCrunch from since his seed spherical closed — besides to say the corporate has grown since its first million. However the firm now counts 200 firms as clients, together with Weber Shandwick and his outdated employer, the Boston Consulting Group, he says.
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