Dylan Collins, the Irish entrepreneur and investor whose SuperAwesome London start-up is understood to be planning a public float. Image: Jolt
Irish entrepreneur Dylan Collins’s kid-safe digital marketing platform SuperAwesome is understood to be plotting an IPO on the London Stock Exchange.
SuperAwesome, the London-headquartered start-up led by Collins, works with brands like Disney, Lego, Mattel, Peppa Pig and Warner to help them reach youth markets all over the world.
The company enables brands to market to children and teenagers in a safe and legal way.
‘This new generation of kids – the centennials – has grown up with tablets, smartphones etc. Although they still watch TV, their first content experiences have often been YouTube or something similar’
– DYLAN COLLINS
According to reports, SuperAwesome has engaged with several City institutions in London and is at the early stages of exploring going public.
According to City A.M., the company has not yet appointed an adviser and may also explore a further round of funding from investors as another option.
In 2015, the company raised a $7m Series A investment from investors including IBIS TMT, Twenty Ten Capital, and Sandbox & Co as well as Collins’s own venture capital firm Hoxton Ventures.
Hoxton Ventures was among a number of investors to participate in a $70m Series C round in Deliveroo two years ago.
Forget the millennials, the centennials are the ones to watch
Last June, we reported that SuperAwesome’s digital marketing empire in Asia now reaches more than 90m kids every month, and was moving into short-form content through mediums like Snapchat and PopJam.
Collins founded SuperAwesome in 2012 to develop kid-friendly marketing on behalf of major kids’ brands like Disney and Nickelodeon. The network has been growing steadily around the world and two years ago, it expanded into the US after acquiring MobiGirl Media, a mobile ad network for girls based in LA.
Collins is one of Ireland’s most successful entrepreneurs, embarking on his start-up career while at Trinity College Dublin with Phorest, which is still in business today, and games middleware firm Demonware, which is also still active.
Activision acquired Demonware in 2007 for an estimated $15m.
“This new generation of kids – the centennials – has grown up with tablets, smartphones etc. Although they still watch TV, their first content experiences have often been YouTube or something similar.
“As they get older, it becomes PopJam, Snapchat etc. Screen size typically dictates shorter content length, which is why you’re seeing one-to-five-minutes becoming so much more popular with the under-13 audience,” Collins told Siliconrepublic.com last June.
