Hi there,
Welcome to the 83rd edition of Heartcore Consumer Insights. Curated with 🖤 every week by the Heartcore Team.
If you missed the past newsletters, you can catch up here. Now, let’s dive in!
Fishbowl: Journey to 1M users - Leo Luo
Many professional social platforms today serve as a directory rather than a social platform and fail to facilitate genuine interactions among their users.
This is an observation that Matt Sunbulli had when he founded Fishbowl in 2017, an anonymous social app for professionals that recently got acquired by Recruit Holdings. Today’s story is a case story on how Matt built a social product that grew to have more than 1M users.
Fishbowl's initial product was an iOS app that allowed people from the same niche industry to interact with each other, a combination of LinkedIn and Reddit.
The first major setback the team faced was a content liquidity crisis. To understand the root cause of the problem, Matt reached out to users and found that the reason people were not posting content was that their professional brands were holding them back: “Professionals on LinkedIn are expected to have the answers, so they're not comfortable asking questions. It's all user psychology.” That key understanding helped shape one of the most important product decisions in Fishbowl’s history: making the platform semi-anonymous.
First 100K customers: one of the key growth principles at Fishbowl is adjacent word-of-mouth. Virality has a certain velocity, which includes both a spreading speed and a vector (the direction of the spread). After studying the spread, the Fishbowl team realized that virality tends to spread the fastest within the same company. Once a management consultant at PwC in the NYC office starts using the app, many of their colleagues would also download it.
Another principle at play here is the magic number of 5%. One insight they learned is that once they penetrate 5% of a firm, the speed of WoM spread tends to accelerate dramatically.
First 1M users: today, word of mouth contributes to +50% of new users. On the paid side, the team at Fishbowl has figured out an effective playbook around influencer marketing, sponsoring different influencers on different social platforms. For example, in the management consulting industry, many of the consultants follow different consulting meme accounts, such as Consulting Humor. Fishbowl frequently sponsors their Instagram stories which have proven to be a great acquisition channel. This has worked so well that Fishbowl has started its own consulting meme page called Fishbowl Consultants.
The Rising Consumer Demand for Data Privacy and Autonomy - Sequoia
In the April 2021 iOS 14.5 update, iPhone users were given the option of whether or not to be tracked across apps. A staggering 96% chose not to be tracked, indicating that when given the choice, users choose privacy.
In January 2021, tens of millions of users flocked to encrypted messaging platforms Signal and Telegram. The migration was driven at least in part by anxiety about WhatsApp’s privacy policy. Simultaneously, DuckDuckGo has continued to grow, now exceeding over 100M queries daily on average.
These impressive statistics point to a sea change in consumer demand for increasing privacy.
The movement of all communications moving online during the COVID-19 pandemic helped open the public’s eyes to digital privacy. Consumers started to demand more out of the companies they would share their data with.
Increasing consumer interest in cryptocurrencies, DeFi, and NFTs is also driving wider consumer adoption of cryptography and education about privacy practices.
Simultaneously, innovative newcomers have entered the scene and made privacy-first apps more attractive, leveraging existing UX patterns to create familiar experiences. As the newcomers gain traction with part of the population, they exert market pressure on the incumbents to start at least gesturing towards privacy.
Increased supply of user-friendly private tech and increased demand for privacy have converged, creating a moment of unprecedented opportunity for founders with a vision for privacy-first online experiences. Privacy isn’t a fad. This is an important cultural shift that will drive innovation - and we’ve only scratched the surface.
Doordash x Wolt Investor Presentation
Bulb Energy collapses into administration
The Power of Brand
Nerdwallet S-1 TL;DR
Facebook "Young Adults" Social Usage Research
Virgil Abloh's DAO vision
Most important metrics to track when building a consumer business
a16z DAOs Canon
Hiring The Wrong Growth Leader
🇪🇺 Notable European early-stage Consumer rounds :
Jump, a France-based benefits provider for freelancers, raises $4.5M from Index/Kima - link
Upway, a France-based reconditioned e-bike marketplace, raises $5.7M from Sequoia/GFC - link
Yababa, a Germany-based same-day grocery delivery business selling products geared towards Turkish and Arabic communities, raises $15.5M from Creandum and Project A - link
Mainframe Games, a Finland-based cloud-based MMO games studio, raises €20M from a16z - link
BetDEX, a Scotland-based company creating a decentralized sports betting protocol, raises $21M from FTX/Paradigm/Lightspeed - link
🇺🇸 Notable US early-stage Consumer rounds :
Mem Protocol, an S.F.-based company building a Web 3.0 version of Quora, raises $3M from a16z - link
Fora, an N.Y.-based company enabling every travel enthusiast to become a travel agent, raises $5M from Forerunner/Heartcore 🖤 - link
Fractional, an S.F.-based startup that invites friends and strangers to co-own real estate properties, raises $5.5M from CRV/YC - link
Partyround, an S.F.-based startup building software making the process of raising early-stage corporate capital simpler, raises $7M from a16z - link
Fourthwall, an L.A.-based creator commerce platform, raises $17M from Lightspeed/Initialized/Seven Seven Six - link
Helaina, an N.Y.-based company developing a new kind of infant milk, raises $20M from Spark/Siam Capital - link
🔭 Notable later stage Consumer rounds :
Quince, an S.F.-based online retailer that sells its own clothing and home furnishings, raises $50M from Insight - link
Royal, an Austin-based music copyright NFT marketplace, raises $55M from a16z - link
OpenStore, a Miami-based startup that acquires Shopify businesses, raises $75M from General Catalyst - link
Podimo, a Denmark-based audio platform, raises $78M from 83North/Highland /Heartcore 🖤 - link
Peek, an S.F.-based travel and tourism booking marketplace, raises $80M from WestCap/Goldman Sachs - link
Trusted, an S.F.-based labor marketplace for nurses and other health professionals, raises $94M from Greenspring - link
Leocare, a France-based neo-insurer, raises $110M from Eight Roads/Daphni - link
Lessen, a Scottsdale-based marketplace that connects real estate owners to property services, raises $170M from Fifth Wall/Khosla/General Catalyst - link
Sword Health, a Portuguese-based company creating a digital solution for the treatment of musculoskeletal pathologies, raises $189M from Sapphire Ventures/General Catalyst - link
Motorway, a U.K.-based platform on which professional car dealers can bid in an auction for privately owned cars for sale, raises $190M from Index/ICONIQ - link
Grammarly, an S.F.-based company that makes writing assistance software, raises $200M from Baillie Gifford/BlackRock - link
Niantic, an S.F.-based augmented reality company behind games like Pokémon GO, raises $300M from Coatue - link
LTK, a Dallas-based creator-driven marketplace, raises $300M from Softbank - link
Impossible Foods, a Redwood-based plant-based meat company, raises $500M from Mirae Asset Global Investments - link
MoonPay, a Miami-based company whose software invites users to buy and sell cryptocurrencies using conventional payment methods, raises $555M from Tiger/Coatue - link
🍭 Notable Consumer Exits
Chegg acquires Busuu for $436M. Busuu is a UK-based language learning startup - link
Booking acquires Etraveli Group for $1.83Bn. Etraveli is a Sweden-based flight comparison site - link
🖤 Heartcore
🛵 Our portfolio company Weezy just got acquired by q-commerce pioneer Getir. Heartcore has led the Pre-Seed round in early 2020. Congratulations to the entire team 🎉
🎧 Podimo raises a $78M Series B round led by 83North and Highland Europe. Heartcore has been an investor since day one and we are looking forward to the next chapter of this exciting journey. Huge congrats to the entire team at Podimo 🍾
We're super excited to announce our investment in Fora’s $5M seed round, alongside Forerunner & Uncommon Ventures. Fora will redefine what we think of the travel agency and enable people who want to sell travel as a career, or in their spare time, a way to do it. Welcome to the Heartcore family 🖤
Heartcore Consumer Insights is a weekly newsletter covering notable consumer rounds and exits and top content in the B2C space.