Newness raises $3.5 million for its ‘Twitch for beauty streamers’
https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/26/newness-raises-3-5-million-for-its-twitch-for-beauty-streamers/
Newness, a startup co-founded by former Twitch employees, has raised $3.5 million in a Sequoia-led seed round for its live-streaming platform aimed at beauty creators and their fan communities. Though today’s creators are not without options when it comes to livestreaming — Twitch, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook are all popular choices — Newness is focused on building differentiated tools and features that work well for the beauty streamer market in particular. This includes offering options for both public and private streams, engagement mechanisms that reward positive contributions, moderation features, and the ability for fans to earn access to free beauty products by community participation.
In the new round, Jess Lee invested on behalf of Sequoia Capital. Other investors in Newness include Cowboy Ventures (Aileen Lee), Upside Partnership (Kent Goldman), Dream Machine (former TechCrunch editor Alexia Bonatsos), Index Ventures (Nina Achadjian), Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, former Twitch execs Jonathan Shipman and John Sutton, Eventbrite founders Kevin and Julia Hartz, Incredible Health co-founder and CEO Iman Abuzeid, and other angel investors from Twitch.