Paul Erlanger and Se Yong Park, co-founders of shopper crypto trading app Fomo, took an uncommon path to elevating capital that’s paying off for them.
Their app launched in May they usually simply introduced a $17 million Series A spherical led by Benchmark — an atypical crypto bet for the top-tier VC agency — bringing whole funding to $19 million.
Instead of a traditional seed spherical, the founders drew up a listing of 200 folks they dreamed of getting as angel buyers.
“We knew that every single person would be valuable to us in the business,” Erlanger advised Ztoog.
Then they labored their networks for heat intros — each had beforehand labored on the in style crypto trading platform dYdX. Failing that, they made chilly calls. And 140 of their dream angels wrote checks after listening to their pitch.
They landed such large names within the crypto world as Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron, co-founder of Solana Raj Gokal, and former Coinbase CTO and super-angel Balaji Srinivasan, the founders mentioned.
“There’s a lot of people we never got to, like Elon Musk,” Park mentioned with a grin, however of those who did take their name, lower than a handful mentioned no, he mentioned.
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The angels appreciated their concept of a tremendous app that provides shoppers entry to each crypto asset ever (thousands and thousands of them), out there on any blockchain, with, they promise, no technical friction. The app additionally has a social element baked into it, the place customers can comply with pals and leaders they respect to see their trades.
While Fomo doesn’t but have each asset from each blockchain out there, the founders mentioned they’re on monitor to be near that purpose in six months. And among the many thousands and thousands of property they do supply in the present day, customers can commerce the whole lot from main cash like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana to meme cash and altcoins, they are saying.
The final imaginative and prescient is to someday permit shoppers to commerce every kind of different property on the app, from prediction markets to straightforward securities like bonds.
A month after Fomo’s May launch, the founders added a function that dramatically modified their firm’s trajectory: help for Apple Pay. This basically let customers obtain the app and rapidly begin trading.
“We saw a massive influx of users and revenue,” Erlanger mentioned. Fomo immediately soared to about $150,000 in income per week and $3 million in quantity a day, the founders mentioned.
The app collects transaction charges on every commerce of 0.50% (with a minimal charge of $0.95 for transactions on Solana, and no minimal charge on different, less-expensive blockchains like Base and BNB Chain). But it doesn’t make customers pay so-called “gas fees,” or the charges blockchains cost to course of transactions. That’s a actual promoting level for customers all in favour of holding the main cash, Park mentioned.
Their many-angels technique paid off as a result of not one however three folks reached out to Benchmark early-stage investor Chetan Puttagunta to supply an introduction, Puttagunta advised Ztoog.
Puttagunta was a long-shot selection for a lead investor of the Series A spherical that Erlanger and Park had been actively pursuing. Benchmark is selective with its picks and doesn’t make investments a lot in crypto startups. It backed Chainalysis in 2018, alongside with Toncoin and a few others.
But Puttagunta (who’s backed such firms as Elastic, Cursor, Manus, and LangChain) noticed Fomo’s quick development and was satisfied to take a likelihood, and a board seat.
“Paul and Se and the entire team have a clear vision to make crypto assets both easy to discover and trade,” Puttagunta mentioned. “Their vision is clearly resonating with truly exceptional growth since they launched a few months ago.”
Benchmark was the one institutional verify the founders took, with the remainder of the spherical going to current angels and new ones.
So far, it appears to be like like Benchmark’s bet might repay. Since the spherical closed in September, Fomo has added extra property from extra blockchains to its app and has seen development go even crazier. The founders say they’ve onboarded over 120,000 customers. “We’re now doing about $20-$40 million in volume a day, and about $150,000 in revenue a day,” Erlanger mentioned.