Ello raises another $5M: 'We don't give a sh*t about outside expectations'

From Mashable

Ello, the social network that received a tremendous amount of media attention last year as a possible "Facebook killer" before fading out of the spotlight (like most would-be Facebook killers), has raised another $5 million in funding.

This new round of financing brings Ello's total funding to date to $11 million, and will likely again raise the question of whether a service some see as a quirky Facebook clone can ever build a serious business that would justify the many comparisons to the social networking behemoth.

However, the team at Ello say they could not care less about all that.

"We frankly don’t give a sh*t about outside expectations because those are based on comparisons to a model that we think is negative, manipulative and broken," Paul Budnitz, the serial entrepreneur behind Ello, told Mashable in an email. "The new investment gives us time to grow our way, to hire the best people, and to keep Ello free and positive and beautiful as it grows."

Ello quietly launched a beta version of its minimalist, ad-free social network targeting creatives in March 2014, and gained traction in September amid an outcry over a Facebook policy requiring users to go by their legal names. At that time, Ello was far from polished and didn't even have an app.

In the months since then, the company has grown to 26 employees who work to improve Ello's features and plan to launch a mobile app this spring.

Ello's new mobile app

Budnitz declined to provide precise user numbers, noting that Ello is still in beta.

"I can tell you that we’re in the millions now, and that about 80% of our community growth is from invitations from existing people on Ello," he said. "We’re totally focused on growing from the inside out."

Budnitz and other Ello employees have openly criticized Facebook's policy of collecting user data for marketing, while at the same claiming that they are not in fact an "anti-Facebook" and don't even consider it a competitor.

"The media created this catfight last fall — the catfight amongst social networks — positioning us as the anti-," Rene Alegria, Ello's recently hired chief marketing officer, told Mashable in an earlier interview. "That's not what we stand for ... What we're working toward is galvanizing the creative community."

It's a smaller ambition than, say, connecting the entire world as Facebook is trying to do, but that doesn't stop Ello insiders from speaking in grandiose terms. Budnitz referred to Ello in an email as a "social revolution." Mark Solon, managing partner at Techstars Ventures, which invested in the latest round, described Ello in a statement as "a company whose business will literally change the world."

For now, we're just waiting to see if Ello can literally build a business.