Cooley advised IRL, a social calendar application, on its $170 million Series C financing round, which brings its valuation to more than $1 billion. Lawyers Steven Dunst, Sean O'Neill and Matt O'Brien led the Cooley team advising IRL.
SoftBank's Vision Fund 2 led the round, which also included participation from new investor Dragoneer and existing investors Goodwater Capital, Founders Fund and Floodgate. IRL will use the new capital to invest in product growth, international expansion and its creator and culture fund, as well as grow its 25-person team to 100 by year end.
"Whether we succeed or fail will be based on our ability to execute on our opportunity," Abraham Shafi, co-founder and CEO of IRL, said in a news release. "What we're building isn't the media part of social, it's the real human interaction part of social, because that hasn't been paid attention to as much."
IRL, a messaging-based social network, aims to solve technology addiction by bringing people together in real life. The app brings people together through events and shared experiences and features a series of suggestions for invites that users can send, which change regularly based on users' interests or location, seasons and upcoming holidays. Its groups feature, which launched less than a year ago, provides social networking features like support for group chats.