One Direction Uses London Based YC Startup To Raise $780,000 For Charity

One Direction, YC, Startups, Everywhere ElseThe extremely popular British boy band One Direction sells everything in the world with their logo on it. Go into a retail store of any kind, and you’ll find 1D branded merchandise from bed sheets to school supplies to talking dolls and everything in between. In fact the band makes more off licensing than album sales. But when the lads decided to raise money for charity, they decided they needed a little help.

Forbes online reports that One Direction turned to a Y Combinator startup with roots at Oxford University. The startup, called Prizeo, harnesses the power of an amazing Rolodex and relationships that range from Samuel l Jackson to Khloe Kardashian to help build up their already amazing client list.

The company uses a raffle model that gives every entrant into a charity contest one entry. They also work with celebrities to offer huge prizes for fans, visits, or interactions with those celebrities.

For the One Directions charity contest ,they chose British non profit Trekstock, which provides funding for cancer research.

The prize in the contest was an evening on the town with Harry Styles and Liam Payne, arguably the band’s two most popular members.

Before One Direction, Prizeo had raised $1 million dollars across 10 campaigns Forbes reported. 1D raised $780,000 in six weeks.

The campaign attracted 1.4 million views, 240,000 shares and 445,000 video views on YouTube. The hashtag for the campaign trended number one globally.

Trekstock was extremely pleased with the results. “We had no idea how much the campaign could raise,” Sophie Epstone, the company’s CEO, told Forbes.

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