As they continue to shake up the online publishing world, Wattpad announced the addition of OMERS Ventures to its online community for discovering and sharing stories. OMERS joins existing Khosla Ventures of San Francisco, Union Square Ventures of New York and Golden Venture Partners of Toronto.
“We see this as the ideal trifecta, having world-class investment partners from Silicon Valley, New York and Toronto,” said Wattpad CEO Allen Lau. “OMERS Ventures and our other investors will be true partners in our vision for building a company that will transform the publishing ecosystem.”
“It’s astonishing when you grasp the ability Wattpad has to fundamentally transform the very nature of a book by adding a real time, mobile social dynamic to the storytelling process. We’re not only excited to be an investor, we’re also extremely proud that this homegrown Canadian company has such a huge global following and growth prospects,” said Howard Gwin, Managing Director of OMERS Ventures.
With their rapid pace of grown, Wattpad will use the funds to expand its team and bring in new talent through hiring and acquisitions. They will also focus on product enhancements and expanding their community.
So far for the month of September 2012, the total number of stories posted online topped the 6 million mark, with 900,000 new stories now being uploaded every month. Wattpad has 10 million monthly unique users, and the number of minutes spent on the site has more than doubled in just six months to 2.4 billion in August.