Funds for Entertainment Sector Insights Firm StoryFit

In Texas, audience insights provider StoryFit has raised $5.5m in a Series A round of funding, which it will use to expand client solutions and hire for machine learning, marketing and sales roles. The company has also appointed Andy Terrel as Chief Technology Officer.

StoryFit uses natural language processing and machine learning to deliver audience and content insights pre-production, enabling entertainment companies to deliver 'better content faster', identify and position stories for audiences, and to 'harness the overall power of a story throughout the content lifecycle'. The firm uses AI to measure more than 100,000 features, and compare them to thousands of other scripts or books to generate insights.

New funding has been led by Refinery Ventures, whose Managing Partner Tim Schigel will join StoryFit's Board. Other participants in the round included existing and new investors such as Techstars, Elkstone Partners, Collective Capital Ventures, Alumni Ventures and others. Commenting on the news, StoryFit founder and CEO Monica Landers (pictured) says: 'Tim Schigel and Refinery have a history of transforming industries. We're excited to have them on board as partners in this mission'.

Terrel joins after building and scaling data science and engineering teams from the seed stage to IPO - including Anaconda, a platform used by millions of users globally. He becomes part of the existing executive team which includes Landers, COO Marc Evans, and Head of Growth and Revenue Kymn Goldstein.

Web site: www.refinery.com .