Impact, the LinkedIn-like professional network for the entertainment biz founded by filmmakers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, raised $15 million in Series B funding.
The L.A.-based company, founded in 2020, has now landed more than $21 million in total funding. The Series B round was led by venture-capital firm Shasta Ventures with participation from Silicon Valley VC firm Benchmark alongside strategic investors including Skydance, Riviera Partners, Michael Lynton (chairman of Snap and former chairman/CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment), Eric Fellner (producer and co-chairman of Working Title Films), Brian Koppelman and David Levien (creators of “Billions”) and Roku founder/CEO Anthony Wood.
Impact provides professional-networking tools designed to let productions and crews connect and collaborate more easily. The company said it will use the new funding to make hires on its product and engineering teams and to develop and launch new features. Impact was co-founded by Grazer and Howard (who are the executive chairman of Imagine Entertainment) and CEO Tyler Mitchell.
Impact says it currently has 25,000 active users and has helped 60 productions around the world source available crew for more than 130 jobs on major movies and shows from Apple TV+, Universal, Amazon, Disney+, Netflix, HBO Max and Hulu. The company launched in the Atlanta market in September.
With the funding, Shasta Ventures managing director Jason Pressman will join Impact’s board of directors.
“We are excited to be investing in Impact and the team working to bring innovation to an area of the industry that desperately needs it,” Pressman said in a statement. “Production is exploding, yet it’s never been harder to hire crews. We’re excited to see Impact use software to advance the industry in a positive way — making it easier than ever for people to connect, hire, and get hired.”
Grazer commented, “We launched Impact to empower the people who bring stories to life. We want crew to have the ability to access more opportunities and streamline how productions connect and collaborate.”
Added Howard, “There’ve been so many incredible technological advances over the years in digital effects, cameras, editing and streaming, but the actual mounting and producing of shows hasn’t evolved and can’t keep up with the growing demand. We hope that Impact will make the hard-working crews’ jobs a little easier, and allow productions to run a bit smoother and maybe even wrap days earlier.”
Pictured above (l. to r.): Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Tyler Mitchell