Three months after closing a pre-seed investment round, Vancouver fintech startup Blossom publicly launched on the App Store in May.
The social network for retail investors, the first of its kind available to Canadians, received its pre-seed investment round from Pareto Holdings, a venture fund co-founded by Shutterstock founder Jon Oringer.
The BC fintech has since raised an additional $750,000, according to a report from BetaKit. The capital is still considered pre-seed financing, which brings the round to about $1.1 million.
Blossom bills itself as unique from existing social networks because it links to a user’s brokerage account, making it easy to share portfolio and trading activity. Users can follow friends and top investors and get notified of their trades in real time, discovering new investment ideas from a community where opinions are backed up by performance.
The company wants to build “Canada’s first social brokerage.”
“Investing is inherently social,” Maxwell Nicholson, Blossom co-founder and CEO, stated earlier this year. “The new generation of investors learn about stocks from group chats, Reddit, and Discord. Blossom aims to displace these channels by creating a platform built specifically for investors.”
Unlike Reddit and Discord, where opinions aren’t backed by data or performance, on Blossom, investors link their brokerage accounts and showcase a public profile of their portfolio and returns.
Even with pre-seed funding, Nicholson says launching in a bear market is not without its challenges—but he is optimistic for the future.
“I’m so proud of everything the team has accomplished in the last year and am excited to share what we’ve built with the world,” says Nicholson, who left his job at consulting firm McKinsey & Company to start Blossom during the Covid-19 Pandemic. “When stocks are going down there is also a lot of panic selling that goes on, and being part of a strong and knowledgable investor community is a good way to avoid making emotional investing decisions.”
In August, Blossom was one of three Canadian startups selected for a Google Accelerator.
Leave a Reply