31, December 2014: Startup Springleap (www.springleap.co), recent winner of the United Nations Award for Innovation, has announced a successful round of seed funding from a consortium of British and South African investors. Springleap has secured $400 000 from Angel Investors Colenso Capital, Clearwater, Kevin Gaskell and Crystal Bay Capital. 

“The team at Springleap had gained significant traction in a short amount of time with Fortune 500 brands and have a big vision to empower the creative industry.” ­ Kevin Gaskell ­ Chairman of Springleap advisory board, former MD of Porsche and BMW, CEO Eurotaxglass, CEO Fairline Boats. 

Springleap has pivoted into a conduit for clients to access thousands of creatives for design, creative research and co­creation projects. “With our investors’ support, we can now focus on building more innovative models for our agency and brand clients to work with our community of pan­African and global creatives.” says Springleap’s CEO, Eran Eyal. “We will also be focused on building our team to fuel expansion. Our core focus is leveraging our agency creative community to drive ROI on creative and marketing via localized actionable insights ” With that scope for growth, negotiations have been initiated for the second phase of funding with commitments already received from prominent US, UK, EU and ZA­based investors. 

“The pivot at Springleap made a lot of sense, but we are also backing Eran’s ambitions and vision, here. In a short time, he’s brought a world­class team and advisors together around Springleap and positioned the business for huge potential.” ­ Colenso Capital’s Tim Leclecrq 

The investment interest in Springleap comes at a time of increasing attention from the global advertising industry on acquiring local advertising, communications and digital agencies. Springleap’s creative research panel of over 30,000 vetted creatives with ad agency backgrounds delivers localized actionable insights from any territory that ensures the efforts in creative are always spot on for the marketplace. 

“The model Springleap is developing can sit at the heart of any agency to help them flexibly scale and access new varieties of talent and skills across Africa.” comments Clearwater CEO, Derek White. 

There is a massive gap in the brands and agencies market ($580Bn p/a) for a model that is managed, curated, bespoke to the project and not limited to traditional staffing models.” says Peter Binks, Managing Director of Crystal Bay Capital 

With clients such as Samsung, SAB, Nestle, Kraft, and Ogilvy, Springleap was also the recent winner of the MentorCamp finals in Canada and was announced as runner up in the Innovation 100 Awards held in California against the likes of Amazon, eBay and the Apple Store. 

“We recently launched a new type of creative research panel testing that significantly increases ROI on any creative work and marketing before it launches which has been very well received”, concludes Eyal, “Securing the first round of funding puts us on track to seeing our vision of getting our community of agency creatives to refine any creative assets withlocalized actionable insights and feedback in record time to avoid disasters and ROI. It’s a game changer in terms of value and speed of delivery.” 

About Springleap: 

Springleap is a marketplace for managed, curated creative professionals with ad agency backgroungs to help brands, agencies and startups drive increased ROI on creative and marketing dollars through localized actionable insights and to source solutions to creative briefs. With a global network of creatives, Springleap offers scalable solutions to brands and advertising agencies which draw on the expertise of their vast online community. 

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Eran Eyal (CEO / Founder)
Springleap.co
T: +1.646.789.1243
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www.springleap.co