We are excited to announce our recent investment in Atlanta-based Offbeat Media Group. Shep Ogden, Bailey Grady, Kevin Planovsky, and Christopher Travers are rare talents on the leading edge of a new type of media company.

We first got to know Christopher over five years ago through internships at local startups alongside his academics. While attending the University of Georgia, he launched, curated, and grew the locally famous Instagram brand @DogsofUGA, which garnered more than 25,000 followers before sunsetting! Prior to @DogsofUGA, Christopher was responsible for co-founding tandem viral social media networks, uMentioned and Sneek, each focused on connecting people pseudonymously on the basis of personality rather than physical appearances. His creative genius and ability to see the vision in new concepts impressed us. 

We further got to know Christopher when he joined the Atlanta Ventures Studio as a Studio Entrepreneur to help us launch new businesses from scratch. He continued to impress with his ideas, research, and ability to simply test new concepts as MVPs.

It’s at UGA where he first connected with fellow Offbeat founders Shep and Bailey. You could tell early on they had a unique gift of connecting new media with social followers. Over the last three years, the Offbeat team has obsessively built an ad network of social publishers, including in-house media brands @Humor, @Puberty, and more, that reaches more than 1 billion people globally. They use their native media network of both owned and brokered followers to promote some of the world’s fastest-growing brands, such as TikTok, Twitch, Netflix, Warner, and more, as well as launching new, innovative IP, which will be fueled by our investment. 

We see huge opportunity in Offbeat’s work on VirtualHumans.org, MemeMarketing.org, and in continuing to research and develop completely new, digital-media formats to launch on social. While unclear the exact path things will go, we believe the virtual humans space presents a huge opportunity for brands, media, and consumers to collectively engage with.

Furthermore, we believe Shep, Bailey, and Christopher have the special tools and drive to find those market opportunities and create new media models going forward. We all know the impact Turner media had on Atlanta… we’re excited to see Offbeat usher in another wave of new media in this great city!

This is Offbeat Media Group’s first raise and co-investors include Mark Cuban, Atlanta Ventures, and a handful of additional strategic investors.

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Read more about their announcement here. 

Offbeat Media Group is hiring. See their job board.