Belong, a UK-based personal savings and investing app, emerged from stealth mode and announced that they have raised a $3.7mm Pre-Seed funding round. That appears to be quite sizeable compared to the typical pre-seed raise, which is usually around $500,000(1). In fact, it is reportedly "the largest such round ever secured by female founders in Europe"(2). The deal was lead by Octopus Ventures and joined by several prominent industry figures.
We have not seen the platform yet as it will not be launching for 29 days, 19 hours, 2 minutes, and 56 seconds at the time of this writing, according to the website. But they professes to target Millennials to get them started on their saving and investing journey early. Items they say they will be offering are education, easy investing, an excellent user experience, and an innovative feature: a "boost loan." The boost loan will be a loan users can obtain to increase their investments. The founders point out that long-term wealth is built with time and money. While Millennials have plenty of time, they usually lack the money. The boost loan is an effort to solve for that.
The fee for Belong is 0.95% of assets, which seems to be above the average for digital advice or personal investing apps. But they also say that they will be embedding other financial services in the app over time.
(1) DocSend, "The Pre-Seed Round Defined" https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/6191183/The%20Pre-Seed%20Round%20Defined.pdf
(2) Fintech Global, "Belong pioneers new era in WealthTech with groundbreaking £2.95m pre-seed round" March 26, 2024 https://fintech.global/2024/03/26/belong-pioneers-new-era-in-wealthtech-with-groundbreaking-2-95m-pre-seed-round/
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