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Charli D'Amelio, Social Media's Biggest Star, to Star in Ryan Kavanaugh’s Proxima Media New Film Franchise 'Home School'

Second Proxima film to list on the entertainment stock exchange (ESX.io,) allowing fans to buy into the film
Not since "The Six Sense' reveal will audiences be this shocked

LOS ANGELES, April 26, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Home School, the first in an eight–film franchise of supernatural thrillers starring two–time Kids Choice Award winner Charli D'Amelio, will be produced by EGOT nominee (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony) Ryan Kavanaugh""directed by F. Javier Gutierrez.

Kavanaugh has brought more than 200 feature films, and 40 TV shows to audiences worldwide, and this will be the second film to list on the entertainment stock exchange, esx.io.

Award–winning visionary horror film director F. Javier Gutirrez (Before the Fall, Rings) has come on board to direct. Home School marks the live–action feature film debut of D'Amelio, the first TikTokker to accrue 100 million followers on the platform. Production is set to begin July 2022.

Charli shot to global fame on TikTok after posting dance videos in 2019. Since exploding on the app, Charli has parlayed her success into other ventures. She appeared in a 2020 Super Bowl ad for Sabra Hummus and danced in a Jennifer Lopez music video. In September of last year, Hulu launched The D'Amelio Show docuseries, starring Charli and her family, which has already been picked up for a second season. Charli co–created her own clothing line Social Tourist and has worked with major fashion brands, including Louis Vuitton and Prada. Charli was also the youngest star to appear on Time Magazine's NEXT list.

In Home School, Charli will play 'Mira,' a 17–year–old who moves to a different town to live with her aunt after her mother passes away. After arriving in what seems like the all–too–perfect town, Mira soon discovers that her mother's death and her own future are intertwined supernaturally.

“As soon as I read Home School, I knew it was for me. I connected with the character, Mira, the story, the script, and the team. I knew if I was going to do a movie, it needed to be something fun, edgy, and fresh,” Charli says. “While the role will certainly be challenging and push me to learn to act and become Mira, it's a fun ride and meant to be fun to make and fun to watch. I also wanted to make sure I surrounded myself with a great team.”

“When Ryan and I met while developing The Crow remake with Luke Evans, we knew we wanted to foster a creative partnership further. I'm thrilled for Home School to mark our first official project together,” explains director F. Javier Gutirrez. “With its compelling visuals and a strong psychological element, I think Home School has the potential to be a modern classic. I can't wait to work alongside Charli and the Proxima team.”

Gutirrez, a two–time nominee for the best European Fantastic Film award, shot to movie fame with his horror film, Rings, the third installment of The Ring franchise, that opened #2 at the U.S. box office and was praised by Koji Suzuki, author of The Ring novels. His short Brasil, won top honors and numerous awards, including winning the Universal Studios Film Master Award for Best European Director. After its North American premiere at AFI Fest, the film came to the attention of the U.S. industry, landing #3 on the Hollywood International Watchlist. That same year, Before the Fall got an offer for a remake from the late legendary filmmaker Wes Craven. Early in his career, Gutirrez established himself as a horror filmmaker to watch when his first short film, Brasil, which he directed, wrote, and produced in 2002, also won the Sitges Film Festival, one of the world's foremost international festivals, specializing in fantasy and horror.

“We've been developing this project for a few years to bring something new and exciting to the screen,” says Ryan Kavanaugh. “Having Javier direct and Charli star is the perfect package. We are going for 'The Sixth Sense' meets 'Get Out,'” said Kavanaugh.

Home School is written by Casey Giltner, a Minneapolis–based screenwriter whose script On the First Day of Christmas was featured on the 2021 BloodList and was recently picked up by Village Roadshow and Brillstein Entertainment Partners. SVP of Production at Proxima, Daniel Herther, who shepherded the development of Home School, will be producing as well. Kavanaugh's partner Bobby Sarnavesht and Marc, Heidi, and Dixie D'Amelio will serve as executive producers.

Charli D'Amelio is repped by UTA's Steve Cohen and Kevin Yorn of Morris, Yorn, Barnes, Levine, Krintzman, Rubenstein, Kohner, Endlich & Gellman. Proxima and Kavanaugh are repped by Neil Sacker of Sacker Entertainment Law. F. Javier Gutirrez is represented by UTA's Michael Sheresky and Nick Shumaker of Anonymous Content. Stephen Clark of Lichter Grossman Nichols Adler Feldman & Clark negotiated the deal on behalf of F. Javier Gutirrez.

About Proxima and Ryan Kavanaugh
Founder of Proxima Media, the controlling shareholder of Triller, Ryan Kavanaugh is one of the most accomplished, prolific, and honored executives in entertainment industry history. Using an intelligent financial model of film finance, he was dubbed the creator of “Moneyball for movies.” He produced, distributed, and/or structured financing for more than 200 films, generating more than $20 billion in worldwide box office revenue and earning 60 Oscar nominations. He is the 25th highest–grossing film producer of all time. His productions include Fast and Furious 2–6, 300, Social Network, Limitless, Fighter, Talladega Nights, Step Brothers, and Mama Mia! Kavanaugh and Proxima pioneered an innovative finance deal for post–bankruptcy Marvel, making the studio and finance structure that led to Marvel Cinematic Universe. He built the SVOD (streaming) category with Netflix, which boosted that company's market capitalization from $2 to $10 billion. Kavanaugh is the co–founder of Triller, one of the three fastest–growing creator platforms. He recently led the acquisition, merger, and re–launch of the social media and music app.

He also created the powerhouse television company, now known as Critical Content, producing hit shows like Catfish on MTV and Limitless on CBS, which he sold for $200M. The company had 40 television series across 19 networks before its sale. Kavanaugh has earned several achievements and awards, from Variety's Producer of the Year Award to The Hollywood Reporter's Leadership Award, from Fortune's 40 Under 40 Most Influential People in Business to Forbes' Fortune 400, Billion–Dollar Producer by the Daily Variety and the 100 Most Influential People in the World by Vanity Fair.

About Entertainment Stock Exchange (“ESX”)
Entertainment Stock X (ESX), a first–of–its–kind platform allowing users and fans to invest in film and entertainment projects via the Jobs Act, is an innovative platform for financing entertainment. The company fills the need for new and more efficient financing for filmmakers. ESX allows filmmakers to generate a valuable direct marketing relationship with fans and will enable fans to invest in film for the first time. More information is available on ESX.io

Media Contact

Michelle Vieyra
Jive PR + Digital
202–415–7714
michelle@jiveprdigital.com
www.jiveprdigital.com


GLOBENEWSWIRE (Distribution ID 8529683)

Sendoso Achieves Record Growth by Increasing its Users from 20,000 to 28,000 in Less than a Year

SAN FRANCISCO, April 26, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Sendoso, the leading Sending Management Platform, today announced record Q1 growth, reaching an all–time historic platform spend of $85 million and a projected platform spend of $70 million in 2022. With recent customer wins such as Cloudflare, LEVER, Restoration Hardware and Spotify, Sendoso's platform reached a massive milestone of 3 million total lifetime sends during Q1, driven by the 30% YoY growth seen in the first quarter of 2022 and 230% growth in platform spend since 2020. With a jump to 28k users, the company was also recently named an Emerging Unicorn Company by Crunchbase and #5 on G2's Best Software Product for 2022.

As the most established sending platform with the longest history of sending in the industry, Sendoso also continues to expand its carefully curated network of vendors and merchants to offer senders "" and receivers "" even more variety within its global marketplace. New, hand–picked partners "" including Fitbit, Theragun by Therabody, Bellroy, Jane Darcy, Tea Pop, and Goldbelly "" provide unique and diverse offerings to help meet growing customer demand.

"Not only does Sendoso help create meaningful relationships, but the platform is a must have to our marketing stack. We have seen a major ROI on the campaigns we run and our pipeline has been stronger since implementing Sendoso," said Lydia Flocchini, CMO at SurePoint Technologies.

"From day one, our purpose has been to create fulfilling gifting experiences for our customers and those receiving their gifts," said Kris Rudeegraap, CEO and co–founder, Sendoso. "I'm so proud of the momentum we've achieved across the company as it allows us to focus on what matters most – to provide seamless, personalized gifting experiences while building stronger and deeper connections during a time when we all need it most."

In addition to customer and vendor growth, Sendoso remains committed to expanding its own talent across the globe. The company grew by 55% in 2021 globally, with 179 new employees, and is continuing that momentum in 2022 with 195 new hires in Q1 alone. As part of its growth strategy, Sendoso also recently announced it's investing $40 million in a new corporate headquarters in Phoenix, which is expected to open this November and will help enhance collaboration and connection amongst employees in North America.

These milestones showcase Sendoso's continued dedication to combining customer experience with global supply chain expertise, further leading the sending platform category and giving customers even more opportunity to drive revenue with direct sending.

For more information, visit www.sendoso.com.

About Sendoso
Sendoso, the leading Sending Management Platform, helps companies stand out by giving them new ways to engage with customers throughout the buyer's journey. By integrating digital and physical sending strategies, companies can increase the effectiveness of their existing go–to–market programs and improve their relationships with customers. With a global marketplace of highly–curated vendors (over 30,000 gift options), seamless integrations with popular marketing & sales tools (including Salesforce, Oracle, Microsoft, Marketo, and many others), trusted by nearly 1,000 companies, with dedicated logistics and supply chain operations worldwide, Sendoso serves is an essential part of successful demand generation, account–based, and customer experience programs. Founded in 2016, Sendoso is backed by $152M in venture funding and has a global footprint, with a presence in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. Learn more at sendoso.com.

Media Contact
Korina Kennedy, Sr. Director of Corporate Communications
korina.kennedy@sendoso.com


GLOBENEWSWIRE (Distribution ID 8528726)

Aella: Creating Solutions to Africa's Problems With Credit

LAGOS, Nigeria, April 26, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Creating solutions tailored to African problems is crucial in addressing the financial wellness of the continent. The peculiarity of the life patterns of the average African begs one to intentionally design and build mechanisms, to tackle financial illiteracy in the underserved communities. Aella has seized the opportunity to develop solutions to such problems by designing a Debt–as–a–Service model in Nigeria.

With over 300,000 agent clusters, Aella has built a nerve centre to empower businesses with credit infrastructure and business capital. Being one of the foremost micro–business lenders, they have continuously built with initiative and provided software and capital that allows individuals become lenders in minutes. This Debt–as–a–service model is powered by Aella's finance mechanism using decentralized finance.

Aella's partnership with Nomba, formerly known as Kudi: an agency bank in Nigeria is the first official lending partnership that highlights Aella's role as a credit aggregator for agents. Consequently, building more products for them and integrating them into their ecosystem. Nomba has expanded its business by leveraging Aella's credit infrastructure. In six months, Aella has disbursed over $30 million to Nomba agents hitting a milestone.

Another agency lending initiative birthed from Aella's Debt–as–a–service model designed to boost Nigeria's lending ecosystem is its partnership with CrowdForce, a technology–driven agent distribution network. This partnership will see Aella facilitate agents' access to digital financial services for the largely offline population across the country by offering credit. In turn, Aella's credit infrastructure provides over 60,000 agents with funds to scale their businesses.

Ultimately, Aella's credit infrastructure operates in two ways; through asset financing and the debt as a service model. One of Aella's most innovative partnerships is definitely its multimillion–dollar power financing collaboration with Buy Power, a utility payment platform to ease the process of buying electricity for Nigerian residents. Aella's commitment to financial empowerment will enable Nigerians access power, through its diversifying credit solutions for over 6 million customers across the country with Buy Power. This integration will utilize Aella's comprehensive technology platform to provide consumers with the opportunity to buy electricity on credit.

These partnerships are crucial to the overall development of the Nigerian economy and at large the African continent. Aella is introducing cost–effective ways for all classes of Nigerians to access credit. Ready access to credit is key to promoting financial freedom and inclusion, particularly among the underbanked population.

Contact: support@aellacredit.com


GLOBENEWSWIRE (Distribution ID 8529038)

Energy Technology Firm ComboCurve Announces $50M Series B Financing

HOUSTON, April 26, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — ComboCurve, the cloud–based energy analytics and operating platform of choice for many of the world's largest energy companies, announced today that it has raised $50 million through a Series B funding round led by Dragoneer Investment Group and Bessemer Venture Partners. The additional capital comes on the heels of its Series A funding announced less than six months ago.

The Series B capital raise firmly cements ComboCurve as the fastest growing technology company in the energy industry. The additional capital will allow the company to accelerate core product enhancements while expanding into other workflows, including greenhouse gas emissions forecasting, scheduling, and modeling of renewable energy sources.

Since last year's Series A funding round, ComboCurve has quickly become the energy operating platform of choice, boasting 650% year–over–year growth and more than 170 customers with a collective enterprise value exceeding $600 billion. ComboCurve's software was named "Disruptive Technology of the Year" at the 2021 Northam Royalties Assembly Awards.

"ComboCurve was created to solve critical pain points, helping energy companies better manage their forecasting, valuation, reporting and decision–making functions," said Armand Paradis, CEO and Co–Founder, ComboCurve. "Our solution has resulted in widespread adoption by many of the world's leading energy companies, and this investment led by Dragoneer and Bessemer, two of the world's leading technology investment firms, will enable us to engage with additional energy companies to operate more efficiently."

Working in collaboration with energy companies, financial institutions, mineral and royalty firms and private equity groups, ComboCurve's platform unlocks the power of its clients' data with sophisticated software to forecast and report the performance of energy assets and run scenarios with thousands of assumptions in a matter of minutes. Executing on a broader roadmap, ComboCurve's mission is to become the software for energy asset management, including renewables.

“ComboCurve has drastically improved the efficiency, ease, and accuracy of our acquisition efforts and asset management," said Jarret Marcoux, Vice President of Engineering and Acquisitions, Desert Peak. "Our organization is focused on holistic data integration to make informed decisions using the best tools available in the industry, and ComboCurve fits into that strategy perfectly. The speed in which they respond to our needs through feature releases and customer support is unmatched. Because of this, we view them as a true partner rather than simply a software company. ComboCurve has been a refreshing change in an industry littered with antiquated software companies unwilling to innovate, change, or address customer needs."

"ComboCurve is in the early innings of building a truly enduring franchise that is rapidly becoming the software backbone of their customers' day–to–day operations," said Christian Jensen, Partner at Dragoneer Investment Group. "We are excited to partner with Armand and his world–class team as they continue to deepen their suite with existing customers and expand their platform into renewables, emissions reporting, and all corners of the energy market."

"ComboCurve is bringing the energy industry to the cloud and delivering a best–in–class, collaborative solution for energy forecasting, asset management, and more," said Brian Feinstein, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. "We're thrilled to be partnering with ComboCurve in their journey to modernize the energy industry in the U.S. and beyond."

About ComboCurve
Headquartered in Houston, ComboCurve is a smart, scalable energy tech company that provides decision makers the ability to value assets, de–risk decisions and save time through an intuitive cloud–based collaborative platform. For more information visit combocurve.com or follow them on Twitter or LinkedIn.

About Dragoneer Investment Group
Dragoneer is a growth–oriented investment firm with over $27 billion in long–duration capital. Dragoneer has a history of partnering with management teams growing exceptional companies characterized by sustainable differentiation and superior economic models. The firm's track record includes public and private investments across industries and geographies, with a particular focus on technology–enabled businesses. Dragoneer has been an investor in companies such as Airbnb, Alibaba, Atlassian, AppFolio, Bytedance, Ceridian, Chime, Datadog, Doordash, Duck Creek, PointClickCare, Procore, Slack, Samsara, ServiceTitan, Snowflake, Spotify, Uber, UiPath and others.

About Bessemer Venture Partners
Bessemer Venture Partners helps entrepreneurs lay strong foundations to build and forge long–standing companies. With more than 135 IPOs and 200 portfolio companies in the enterprise, consumer and healthcare spaces, Bessemer supports founders and CEOs from their early days through every stage of growth. Bessemer's global portfolio includes Pinterest, Shopify, Twilio, Yelp, LinkedIn, PagerDuty, DocuSign, Wix, Fiverr and Toast and has $9 billion of capital under management. Bessemer has teams of investors and partners located in Tel Aviv, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, New York, London, Boston, Beijing and Bangalore. Born from innovations in steel more than a century ago, Bessemer's storied history has afforded its partners the opportunity to celebrate and scrutinize its best investment decisions (see Memos) and also learn from its mistakes (see Anti–Portfolio).

Contact information:
Kristen Quinn
Paige PR
kristen@paigepr.com


GLOBENEWSWIRE (Distribution ID 8527373)