Weeks after launching a digital stationary store within the app, notetaking company Goodnotes said today it has invested $1.9 million into South Korea-based digital stationary company WeBudding.
WeBudding was founded by Donghwan Shin, Donggyun Ko, and Chaeyoung Lee in 2018. The trio started by selling physical paper notebooks catered towards university students, but eventually, they made a digital pivot. Now it sells various digital stationary items such as planners, journals, stickers, and notebooks. The company told TechCrunch that 80% of its sales come from mobile while 20% of it comes from its websites.
Apart from the investment from Goodnotes, WeBudding has also got a $200,000 investment from Strong Ventures — making this a $2.1 million Series A round. The digital stationary startup has received $4.7 million in funding to date. While the company didn’t disclose the exact valuation, it told TechCrunch that the latest round brought a 52% jump in valuation.
WeBudding already hosted a lot of Goodnotes-compatible assets on its platforms. With the recent Goodnotes store launch and the strategic investment, WeBudding plans to develop globally relevant content for the notetaking app’s store.
Shin, CEO of the digital stationery startup, said that WeBudding is looking to improve its mobile app and also work on content localization for different countries.
“We are also working on expanding our offerings to things like KakaoTalk [a South Korea-based chat app] themes. Additionally, we want to work with famous IPs such as entertainers and musicians to create branded digital stationary,” Chin said.
WeBudding said that it has 2,500 creators on board with more than 16,000 items in the store. It didn’t disclose how it compensates these creators and what percentage cut the company takes from the sales of the digital stationary.
In August, Goodnotes updated its app in four years with features such as AI-powered handwriting and a digital marketplace. The company, which got the iPad App of the Year award from Apple in 2022, has 21 million monthly active users.
