Reid Hoffman Gives Wrapp a Good Rap

LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, shown here at a TechCrunch event, is joining the board of the social gifting startup Wrapp as it expands into the United States.

Image: TechCrunch

Wrapp, the Swedish startup that lets users bestow free—and if they choose, paid—digital gift cards upon friends and family via Facebook, just got another $5 million toward its plans to launch the service in the United States and the United Kingdom this quarter.

The $5 million additional Series A funding was led by Greylock Partners and Atomico, the the international venture capital firm formed by Niklas Zennström, co-founder of Skype and Kazaa, among others. The funding comes on top of the $5.5 million in seed money that the company already had from Atomico and the Nordic venture firm, Creandum, which gave Wrapp its original seed funding nine months ago.

But equally important as the cash is the interest that LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman apparently has in the company—interest that the Skye founder said will help the company gain ground as it expands.

“I very much welcome Reid on the board, and believe we now have plenty of fire power to successfully take on the U.S. market,” Zennström said in the funding announcement.

Hoffman, an angel investor and venture capitalist, similarly talked up the company, which piloted its concept with 25 top merchants in Sweden.

“The value of Wrapp’s social gifting service is instantly obvious to merchants around the world, and in just a few short months the company has demonstrated its ability to quickly scale among consumers,”said Hoffman. “This is a viable, profitable business model from the get-go, with hooks into some of the top global and national merchants in the biggest markets worldwide.”