The cofounder of the company that helped bring the world BroBible wants to help millennials get rich
Scott Grimes cofounded the entertainment-focused digital media company Woven (now Uproxx), which brought the world the edgy young male-aimed site BroBible. Now he wants to help young people better manage their wallets with a new web video venture.
Stackin aspires to become a go-to outlet for millennials looking for help with personal finance. The media property quietly rolled out a series of short videos on Facebook and Instagram last month, along the lines of "WTF is Compound Interest?"
Unlike the live business-news-focused Cheddar, which just received a round of funding and is now valued at $85 million, Stackin is focused on a blend of service content and entertainment, like "Overdraft fees are whack."
Grimes, who is still executive chairman at Uproxx, said he was inspired to launch Stackin after managing so many young people. "I was always blown away by their basic basic lack of fundamental knowledge about finance," he said. "These were educated people. It was amazing. On things like student loan debt, they didn't know where to begin."
So he and partner Kyle Arbaugh, who previously ran revenue and strategy at Uproxx, saw an opening. Cheddar founder Jon Steinberg might tend to agree.
During a recent keynote interview at the Luma Digital Marketing Conference in New York ,Steinberg argued that unlike content categories like food and news, business is a less crowded digital media category. "All the financial brands wrote off millennials," he said. "There is nowhere for all these companies to reach a young audience."
That's the plan for Stackin, which recently brought on Lisa Frame, formerly head of social for the web video brand Tastemade, to oversee the new venture's content.
Stackin has raised funding "in the millions," said a person familiar with the matter. Its investors include Howard Lindzon of Social Leverage, who is cofounder or StockTwits, MuleSoft CEO Ross Mason, and Full Tilt Ventures.
Business-wise, the plan is to sell sponsorships to brands, and also ink affiliate deals with financial services products.
While short form Facebook video will be Stackin's early content focus, later this year the plan is to roll out longer series and eventually sell content to over-the-top services along the lines of Comcast's Watchable and SlingTV.
"The ultimate goal is to be inspiring, and maybe make it cool to invest," said Grimes.