After graduating from Warner Bros.’s 12-week LA accelerator program last week, Chicago-based social commerce platform Kumbuya announced a deal with the entertainment giant that will last through the year’s end.
Kumbuya will be running a pilot for Warner Bros. by managing the online fan bases of five films and TV shows, which include “The Vampire Diaries” and “The Great Gatsby.” This agreement is not only an opportunity for Warner Bros. to deeply engage and sell merchandise to consumers via Kumbuya’s themed online communities, but also opens up a new realm in Hollywood for Kumbuya.
Having just hired their first LA-based employee, the Kumbuya team hopes to expand their deal to even more Warner Bros. properties in 2014, while also building relationships with other studios such as Fox or Paramount, founder and CEO Joshua Karp said.
“Being able to demonstrate to the largest studio in the world that we have an impact on their revenue and their fan base, it’s a great opportunity to show other companies that Kumbuya can work for them,” Karp said.
Although Warner Bros. invests $20,000 in each Media Camp Academy accelerator company, the studio does not promise deals to everyone in the program. But Karp said Warner Bros.’s interest in innovation paved the way to its Kumbuya proposal.
“They have a legitimate commitment to the idea of innovation and learning about how their industry is changing,” Karp said. “They don’t just pay lip service.”
In addition to introducing Kumbuya to Hollywood, The Warner Bros. deal has financial benefits for Kumbuya, too. “The Vampire Diaries,” for example, has about 16 million fans on Facebook which will translate to massive revenue, Karp said, because Kumbuya receives a cut of all transactions made on its platform: “It could be a big boost in revenue; it’s going to be great for Kumbuya all around.”
Although Kumbuya’s emphasis is on studios right now, the company is not becoming a Hollywood-centric startup: there are a “bunch of other concurrent initiatives” in real estate and college communities, for example, Karp said. Because of these efforts, Karp estimates that Kumbuya will jump from 63,000 current users to over 1 million users in the next year.
