Founded in 2006 by Toronto entrepreneurs Alan Lau and Ivan Yuen, the mobile e-reading app company
Wattpad, has a written an exciting story for itself this year.
"The easiest way to explain the concept is that it's like YouTube for books," says marketing coordinator Pamela Odina by phone. "People can share their own stories. We've got partnerships with some major publishers, there's a real mix of content."
That mix now extends to more than 1,000,000 free titles, and continues to grow. As does the company. This summer, Wattpad added their 1,000,000th registered user, and have added another 300,000 since then. But Odina says even those numbers don't tell the bigger story. "Many of our users are not registered, they're just reading. We get 7-million visitors a month."
On the heels of that success, the company
announced $3.5 million in financing in September and moved into new office space near Yonge and Sheppard. Odina says the company is currently focused on building its team to develop more products and platforms. From the two founders five years ago, the company started the year with six staff and just hired number 11 this month. Odina says they plan to add another nine or so staff over the next year.
Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Pamela Odina, Marketing Coordinator, Wattpad