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Finnish social shopping app raised €6M in a seed round led by General Catalyst and Peak

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AI-based shopping platform Blidz announced that it has raised 6 million euros to transform the online shopping experience. General Catalyst and Peak led the round with the participation of D4 Ventures, Fabric Ventures, FJ Labs, and IPR.VC. The platform is designed to provide a refreshing online shopping experience to the user with the help of social and gamified mechanics. The funding will fuel up the company’s growth across Western markets. Helsinki-based company also will be able to expand its supply chain and widen its product suite.

Social shopping app Blidz raises €6m in Seed funding led by General Catalyst and Peak

Blidz, the leading social shopping app combining gamification and social group buying, has raised €6m in Seed funding led by General Catalyst and Peak with participation from D4 Ventures, Fabric Ventures, FJ Labs as well as existing investor IPR.VC. A group of angels such as Youngme Moon and Christopher North also participated in the heavily oversubscribed round. The funding is used to accelerate the company’s growth across Western markets as well as expand its supply chain and product suite.

Blidz, Lasse Diercks, Markus Haverinen

Lasse Diercks (CEO) and Markus Haverinen (CPTO) founded Blidz to transform Western eCommerce through social and gamified mechanics. Blidz social shopping app connects users to millions of value-for-money products that can be bought together at a significant discount. Their portfolio consists of carefully selected products ranging from consumer electronics, fashion, groceries, home and gardening products all the way to virtual items that can be purchased in the app.

The trillion-dollar social eCommerce market is growing rapidly in the West as penetration has reached new heights and more and more consumers embrace online shopping. Blidz is using value-for-money products as its spearhead catering to a large audience, with some of the key early-adopters being women in both rural and urban areas as well as Gen-Z’s and students, who are looking for the best deals online, preferably together with friends.

Blidz, Lasse Diercks“Western online shopping is behind the curve on social adoption. Our goal is to liberate consumers from expensive and boring shopping experiences by letting them leverage their own activity and social networks to get the best value-for-money products anywhere”, said Lasse Diercks.

“Western consumers embrace social and gamified solutions. We see that there is large untapped potential in eCommerce to put our users first and continue building our value-capturing shopping app. Having General Catalyst and Peak on board makes us fully equipped to change Western eCommerce as never been seen before.”

Adam Valkin, Managing Director at General Catalyst commented on the investment: “The Blidz founding team has a number of unique insights relating to the evolution of online commerce. They are creating a new customer experience in the West by combining social media, gaming and shopping into a data-driven entertaining and easy-to-use platform. We’re excited to see what emerges from this talented team.”

Blidz, Peak, Indra Sharma“We met with Lasse and Markus early in their journey. Their grit proved, beyond a doubt, that they are the team that can succeed in socializing Western eCommerce” says Indra Sharma, Partner at Peak. “As consumer behavior is increasingly inclining towards social shopping, we believe that the timing is right and we’re thrilled to partner with Lasse, Markus and the Blidz team.”

About Blidz

Blidz is a social shopping app that is making shopping exciting by combining social group buying, gamification and easy-to-use shopping features. This allows users to leverage their own activity and social networks to get the best value-for-money products anywhere. By liberating users from expensive and boring shopping experiences Blidz aims to disrupt the traditional online shopping model in Western markets.

About General Catalyst

General Catalyst is a venture capital firm that makes early-stage and transformational investments. General Catalyst backs exceptional entrepreneurs who are building innovative technology companies and market leading businesses, including Airbnb, BigCommerce, ClassPass, Datalogix, Datto, Demandware, Gusto (fka ZenPayroll), The Honest Company, HubSpot, KAYAK, Oscar, Snap, Stripe, and Warby Parker. The General Catalyst team leverages its broad experience to help founders build extraordinary companies. General Catalyst has offices in Cambridge, MA, Palo Alto, CA and New York City.

About Peak

Peak is a venture capital fund headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, with offices in Berlin and Stockholm. The fund is 100% backed and run by entrepreneurs who have founded tech juggernauts like Booking.com and entrepreneurs across diverse industries from logistics to FMCG, and beyond.

Since 2008, Peak has championed European founders from day one with a laser-sharp focus on SaaS, marketplaces, and platforms. Peak also invests with reputable international funds such as Accel, Point9, Project A, Insight Partners and Y-Combinator. Peak’s investment portfolio consists of 36 companies, including global auction platform Catawiki, communication platform Trengo, content management system GraphCMS, and international marketplace for study material StuDocu.

Click here to read more funding news.

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Jan Ameri
Jan Ameri
Entrepreneur-by-heart – and by actions since 1998. Being an expert in spotting new opportunities and creating new concepts, Jan has been a partner or co-founder in seven different companies in various industries. In the early 2000’s he was pioneering some of the very first WAP, SMS, and interactive TV based wireless games and fantasy sports games in the Nordic countries. Jan loves to watch Shark Tank and The Profit in his free time. And he is an FC Barcelona fan.

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