Lost My Name raises £3.2m in funding round

Children’s book start-up Lost My Name has raised an additional €4m (£3.2m) in funding from Berlin-based investor Project A Ventures.

The deal with VC Project A is an extension of the original Stage A funding round, which saw the company receive investment from Google Ventures, Greycroft and Allen & Co. Total Series A investment now stands at $13m (£9m).

Florian Heinemann, founding partner at Project A, will also join the Lost My Name board.

He said: “We intend to support Lost My Name in building a solid infrastructure in terms of CRM [customer relationship management], performance marketing and business intelligence to enable growth on an international scale. We believe that with the current team line-up, the competencies within the company and the investor base, Lost My Name is well on track to become one of the relevant global players in personalised children’s content.”

Asi Sharabi, publisher at Lost My Name, said he was “thrilled” to have Project A on board. “As a full-stack publisher, we aim to create the best personalised experiences as we keep blending storytelling, print and engineering in ways that have never been done before," he said. "Project A’s operational expertise and hands on approach will help us upskill our teams and set strong foundations for future growth.”

Lost My Name sells personalised picture books via a website that allows customers to create a book using the name and sex of the child the book is intended for.

Their first product, entitled ‘The Little Boy/Girl Who Lost His/Her Name’ outsold Julia Donaldson’s Superworm, according to Sharabi, with sales totalling 132,616 in the UK in 2014, while sales of Superworm, the highest-ranking picture book, according to Nielsen BookScan, totted up at 115,996 in the same year. The company's second book, The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home, has been available in the UK and the US since Autumn 2015 and is launching in Europe later in 2016.