In a scenario where the majority of new crypto companies are practically begging for funding, Fomo was the only one to do something different and have it turn out good for them. The brainchild of Paul Erlanger and Se Yong Park, Fomo was not only able to attract money from venture capital funds, but it even got one of the most vital companies, Benchmark, to make a rare investment in the crypto arena.
The app, which was introduced in May, vows to provide users with a smooth, free of hassle crypto environment, where they can make trades of any digital currency on any blockchain. It is like an all in one crypto app, with a part trading platform, part social network and is built to remove all the technical annoyances.
When you add $17 million in Series A funding, along with 120,000 users and a booming daily volume together, this is no longer just a matter of crypto, it is about reconsidering access and bringing excitement to digital finance.
Foresight’s Payoff
The Fomo founders had their own way before Benchmark was at their door. They did not go for a normal seed round, instead they created a dream list of 200 potential angel investors and turned 140 of them into supporters.
The list features prominent figures in crypto like Marc Boiron of Polygon Labs, Solana co-founder Raj Gokal, and Balaji Srinivasan among others. Their approach was straightforward yet progressive, which is a product that makes crypto trading available to everyone while connecting social groups to follow and learn from their friends and experts.
This method gained trust in no time. When Benchmark’s Chetan Puttagunta first learned about Fomo from not just one, but three different investors, the company’s remarkable growth became impossible to ignore.
Rarely does Benchmark invest money into crypto, but Fomo’s performance told a story that was far more than what was being said. From Apple Pay integration to daily revenue surpassing $150,000, the app managed to establish that innovation is still worth the bets.
Betting on User-Friendliness and Finance
The backing of Fomo by Benchmark is not just a financial step but also a cultural one. The greatest obstacle for the cryptocurrency market has not been the lack of innovative products, rather it has been the difficulty regarding user-friendliness in the market.
Fomo is a solution to the problem of usability. The trading app functions just as user-friendly as Apple Pay, with a single tap, so it gets rid of non-blockchain “gas fees”. The app eliminates the intimidation factor that makes the average person so likely to stay away from trading.
It is a bet on accessibility for the market, which is an indication that the next considerable revolution in the financial technology industry might be of an existing technology being made easier to use, rather than a new coin coming along.
If Fomo keeps growing its multi-blockchain ecosystem with low friction and high engagement, then Benchmark’s rare crypto gamble could turn out to be one of its most iconic wins.
Bottom Line
Fomo’s rapid rise is a reminder that innovation can be noticed in the simplest of things, there doesn’t have to be any complex algorithms or new coins. Innovation can be seen only in just resolving one user problem, which is to make it easy.
The fact that Benchmark, a firm notorious for its calculated restraint, broke the pattern to invest in a crypto startup says more about the tech industry than about Fomo itself.
It points towards a shift in investors’ preferences, which is towards products that can provide access to the market at low cost rather than the opposite. The question of whether Fomo can keep up its present pace of growth and become the trading platform for everything remains unanswered.
Nonetheless, we can already see proof that even in venture capital’s conventional territories, a little bit of FOMO (fear of missing out) can still mean millions.
