Paul Erlanger and Se Yong Park, co-founders of consumer crypto trading app Fomo, took an unusual route to raising capital that is paying off for them.
Their app launched in May and they just announced a $17 million Series A round led by Benchmark — an atypical crypto bet for the top-tier VC firm — bringing total funding to $19 million.
Instead of a classic seed round, the founders drew up a list of 200 people they dreamed of having as angel investors.
“We knew that every single person would be valuable to us in the business,” Erlanger told TechCrunch.
Then they worked their networks for warm intros— both had previously worked at the popular crypto trading platform dYdX. Failing that, they made cold calls. And 140 of their dream angels wrote checks after hearing their pitch.
They landed such big names in 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 said.
“There’s a lot of people we never got to, like Elon Musk,” Park said with a grin, but of the ones who did take their call, less than a handful said no, he said.
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The angels liked their idea of a super app that gives consumers access to every crypto asset ever (millions of them), available on any blockchain, with, they promise, no technical friction. The app also has a social component baked into it, where users can follow friends and leaders they respect to see their trades.
While Fomo doesn’t yet have every asset from every blockchain available, the founders said they are on track to be close to that goal in six months. And among the millions of assets they do offer today, users can trade everything from major coins like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana to meme coins and altcoins, they say.
The ultimate vision is to one day allow consumers to trade all kinds of other assets on the app, from prediction markets to standard securities like bonds.
A month after Fomo’s May launch, the founders added a feature that dramatically changed their company’s trajectory: support for Apple Pay. This essentially let users download the app and quickly start trading.
“We saw a massive influx of users and revenue,” Erlanger said. Fomo instantly soared to about $150,000 in re …