• by Ray Schultz , September 27, 2017

Abovo42 Corp,. a “social email” technology provider and portfolio company of Cogo Labs, has raised $1.75 million in equity and debt financing. The funding round was led by Link Ventures.

The company allows consumers to publish content on the Internet. They can start by “sending or forwarding any email," states Sean Fenlon, founder/CEO of Abovo42

It is the parent of Meta42, which serves a variety of brands and lead-buyers.

The firm plans to use the funding to attract potential users of its consumer technology. And it expects to grow its advertising base and monetize clicks. Funding will be used partly for new hires and into expansion of its email marketing technology on the Meta42.co side of the business.

The company also hopes to pursue a revenue model similar to those of Google and Facebook.

Abovo42 allows communities to form around shared topics of interest, somewhat like Reddit, but it is done via email. The service is free for consumers.

“Marketers use the current version of the Abovo42.com website by adding 'Post@Abovo42.com' to their email/newsletter distribution lists,” Fenton says. “When their email newsletter is sent, it instantly creates an exact replica of the email but as an HTML page on the web, which can be instantly shared using the sharing buttons at the bottom of each post.” 

Fenton adds that “the content in marketers' newsletters is often outstanding, but is not duplicated anywhere on the web and thus not accessible to search engine crawlers.”

However, he contends that “the same newsletter posted on Abovo42.com often gets indexed by the search engines within minutes and may benefit from natural search traffic -- all the links in their newsletter still direct the user back to their site(s), so it's a way of extracting more value from an existing content asset.”

Marketers can also pay the firm to advertise. Clicks on ads go to the advertiser’s landing page. This all goes through the Meta42.co side of the business.

The firm now has seven full-time employees at its Baltimore headquarters, but expects that total to hit at least 15 this time next year, Fenton says.

Abovo42 is a portfolio company of Cogo Labs, and receives a “significant amount of support services” from  Cogo Labs, and will until “we're at a size and place where we can do it all internally,” Fenton says. The company also engages outside contractors.

“Sean and his team have achieved some of the fastest growth we’ve ever seen in the early innings,” states Dave Blundin, managing partner of Link Ventures, and chairman of Cogo Labs.

He adds, “We see tremendous potential in empowering the world’s Internet users to become Internet publishers and participating in web-based communities by simply using their own email.”