Blend, a San Francisco, CA-based developer of a college-exclusive mobile app, secured $2.7m in seed funding.
The round was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), with participation from Trinity Ventures, Foundation Capital, Lerer Ventures, Maveron, BoxGroup, XG Ventures, and SparkLabs Global Ventures.
The company intends to use the funds to grow the team (of currently five) and develop the beta product adding new features.
Founded in 2013 by Akash Nigam, CEO, Matt Geiger, and Evan Rosenbaum, Blend is a social app available exclusively to college students, who can share photos based on the Blend theme of the day, earn Snaps or “likes” on their photos from their peers, and use Snaps as “social currency” to score gifts, such as products and gift cards from popular brands.
Since October 2013, when it launched the app in beta, the company has partnered with over 200 brands including Uber, Chegg, Rowdy Gentleman, Fraternity Collection, and Alex & Ani. The app has over 50,000 daily active users in over 3,500 universities.
Previously, Blend had received support from incubator Digital Catalyst Fund.
FinSMEs
05/03/2014