Very Ventures, the investment and product scaling division of Very, LLC, announced Tuesday that it has successfully completed an exit of its investment in ReadyCart, LLC. The company was acquired by Grapevine, the world’s leading end-to-end influencer marketing platform with more than 135,000 influencers in the network.
Since it was launched in 2014, ReadyCart has been the market leader in bundling products mentioned on YouTube videos, allowing viewers to purchase products in a single click. Created by Very, ReadyCart delivers e-commerce insights and generates incremental revenue to social media influencers and the media networks that manage them.
"The amount of product-driven content was skyrocketing across different platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and blogs," said Jesse Morris, a co-founder of ReadyCart and a partner with Very. "As we searched for ways to monetize content, we were baffled by influencers’ inability to get compensated for inspiring their followers to make purchases beyond the traditional methods of advertising and affiliate marketing. We knew we could bring a product to market and solve for that gap."
Very Ventures provided a combination of capital investment, product development and operational expertise, moving ReadyCart from an early experiment to a platform that could generate value by connecting more than 135,000 YouTube creators in the Grapevine network to large e-commerce brands and retailers.
“Very Ventures helps management teams scale companies by generating cash flow and enterprise value,” said Jonathan Bragdon, a partner with Very and the head of Very Ventures. "ReadyCart is the first portfolio company that we have backed from inception to exit, and it represents the kind of innovation and strategic market disruption that we will continue to seek out.”