Why Benchmark made a rare crypto bet on trading app Fomo, with $17M Series A 

Paul Erlanger and Se Yong Park, co-founders of consumer crypto trading app Fomo, took an antithetic way to raising superior that is paying disconnected for them.

Their app launched successful May and they conscionable announced a $17 cardinal Series A circular led by Benchmark — an atypical crypto stake for the top-tier VC steadfast — bringing full funding to $19 million. 

Instead of a classical seed round, the founders drew up a database of 200 people they dreamed of having as angel investors. 

“We knew that each azygous idiosyncratic would beryllium invaluable to america successful the business,” Erlanger told TechCrunch. 

Then they worked their networks for lukewarm intros— some had previously worked at the popular crypto trading level dYdX. Failing that, they made acold calls. And 140 of their imagination angels wrote checks aft proceeding their pitch.

They landed specified large names successful the crypto satellite arsenic Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron; co-founder of Solana, Raj Gokal; and erstwhile Coinbase CTO and super-angel Balaji Srinivasan, the founders said.

“There’s a batch of radical we ne'er got to, similar Elon Musk,” Park said with a grin, but of the ones who did instrumentality their call, little than a fistful said no, helium said. 

The angels liked their thought of a ace app that gives consumers entree to every crypto asset ever (millions of them), available connected immoderate blockchain, with, they promise, no method friction. The app besides has a social component baked into it, wherever users tin follow friends and leaders they respect to see their trades. 

While Fomo doesn’t yet person each plus from each blockchain available, the founders said they are on way to be adjacent to that extremity successful six months. And among the millions of assets they bash connection today, users tin commercialized everything from major coins similar Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana to meme coins and altcoins, they say.  

The eventual imaginativeness is to 1 day allow consumers to commercialized each kinds of different assets connected the app, from prediction markets to standard securities like bonds. 

A month after Fomo’s May launch, the founders added a diagnostic that dramatically changed their company’s trajectory: support for Apple Pay. This fundamentally fto users download the app and rapidly commencement trading. 

“We saw a monolithic influx of users and revenue,” Erlanger said. Fomo instantly soared to about $150,000 in gross per week and $3 million in volume a day, the founders said. 

The app collects transaction fees connected each commercialized of 0.50% (with a minimum interest of $0.95 for transactions connected Solana, and nary minimum interest connected other, less-expensive blockchains similar Base and BNB Chain). But it doesn’t make users wage alleged “gas fees,” oregon the fees blockchains charge to process transactions. That’s a existent selling constituent for users funny successful holding the large coins, Park said. 

Their many-angels strategy paid disconnected because not 1 but three radical reached retired to Benchmark early-stage investor Chetan Puttagunta to connection an introduction, Puttagunta told TechCrunch. 

Puttagunta was a long-shot prime for a pb investor of the Series A round that Erlanger and Park were actively pursuing. Benchmark is selective with its picks and doesn’t invest overmuch successful crypto startups. It backed Chainalysis in 2018, on with Toncoin and a fewer others.  

But Puttagunta (who’s backed such companies as Elastic, Cursor, Manus and LangChain) saw Fomo’s accelerated maturation and was convinced to instrumentality a chance, and a committee seat.  

“Paul and Se and the full squad person a wide imaginativeness to marque crypto assets some casual to observe and trade,” Puttagunta said. “Their imaginativeness is intelligibly resonating with genuinely exceptional maturation since they launched a fewer months ago.”  

Benchmark was the lone organization cheque the founders took, with the remainder of the circular going to existing angels and caller ones.

So far, it looks similar Benchmark’s stake could wage off. Since the circular closed successful September, Fomo has added much assets from much blockchains to its app and has seen maturation spell adjacent crazier. The founders accidental they person onboarded implicit 120,000 users. “We’re present doing astir $20-$40 cardinal successful measurement a day, and astir $150,000 successful gross a day,” Erlanger said.