Vancouver-based FinTech startup has secured more than $2.1 million CAD in seed funding to fuel the growth of its investing social network south of the border. Nearly $1 million came from Blossom users through a recent equity crowdfunding campaign, while the more than $1.
1 million remaining was provided by LOI Venture, Goodwater Capital, and angel investors through simple agreements for future equity. Back when Blossom raised in pre-seed financing a year and a half ago, the startup’s goal was to work with Canadian regulators to become the country’s first “social brokerage,” consisting of a social network app that also enabled Canadians to buy and sell stocks directly. “We were trying to compete with the Wealthsimples, the Questrades of the world,” Blossom co-founder and CEO Maxwell Nicholson told BetaKit in an exclusive interview.
But as technology market conditions and Blossom began to find product-market fit (PMF) with its existing app, Blossom abandoned this vision 10 months ago, eschewing the competition, complexity, costs, and geographic limitations associated with becoming a brokerage in favour of being a pure-play social platform. “It was the wrong strategy, so we scrapped those plans entirely just to focus on being the investing social network,” said Nicholson. “If you think of LinkedIn as the social network for everything jobs and career, we’re building the social network for everything money and finance.
” Instead, the company’s latest funding .
