Curalate: visual analytics startup raises $3M, still committed to Philly

Nearly the whole Curalate team in the mezzanine at the First Round Capital. It was a half-hearted attempt to celebrate Flannel Friday.

If 2012 was Curalate‘s time to be Rookie of the Year (just look at all these awards!), the startup is hoping that 2013 will be its chance to be MVP.

The visual analytics firm based in First Round Capital‘s University City office recently announced it had raised a $3 million series A round led by NEA with participation from First Round Capital and MentorTech Ventures. All three venture firms participated in Curalate’s $750,000 seed round last spring. CEO Apu Gupta said a big reason the company raised the round was in anticipation of competitors.

“We pioneered the space and woke everyone up to it,” he said, predicting that the visual analytics space will soon get crowded.

And if you caught that, we said visual analytics, not Pinterest analytics, because CEO Apu Gupta tells us the startup will be using the money to grow the platform and expand to other visual networks.

Here are three other updates from the startup:

• First Round Capital managing partner Josh Kopelman has joined Curalate’s board.
• Curalate is not yet profitable, but since this summer, it has tripled its paid customer-base (beyond trial clients) to more than 300 brands, including big-names like Gap, The Food Network and Michael Kors.
• Its staff has grown from six full-time employees this past summer to 14, including two staffers running sales out of First Round Capital’s New York City office.

Curalate’s Gupta also says the startup’s headquarters are staying put right here in Philly. Gupta said he was concerned that the startup’s lead funder, the Silicon Valley-based NEA, would ask him to move his company out west, given the large investment it had made. But NEA didn’t make the ask.

Gupta thinks that has to do, in part, with Kopelman being based here in Philly. Philly’s location has also helped Curalate because many of its clients are headquartered in New York City, Gupta said.

Curalate will be moving to its own office soon, though. With its 12 employees in the First Round Capital office, things have gotten a bit cramped, Gupta said.

Though it’s grown, the tight-knit team hasn’t lost its fun-loving spirit: they still take shots when a new employee comes on board, often do Friday happy hour together (they have been known to frequent Penn bar Smokey Joe’s) and are even testing out a new tradition: a chef-prepared lunch once a week.

[Full Disclosure: Technically Philly’s offices are adjacent to Curalate’s in the First Round Capital headquarters]