Passionfroot raises $3.4M pre-seed funding to empower creators
Today, we’re announcing our $3.4m pre-seed funding to empower creators as the new generation of entrepreneurs. The round is led by Sabina Wizander from Creandum (special shout-out to Beata Klein and Harneet Dhaliwal) alongside a global community of diverse founders, operators and creators.
Empowering creators and solopreneurs
Right now, the life of a creator is exhausting. 70% of their time is spent on business activities rather than creating content. Most are multi-SKU creators, meaning they don't rely on a single product to make a living but leverage several products (e.g. newsletter, speaker engagement, podcast, etc.), platforms and revenue streams simultaneously.
However, the current solutions in the business world are not made to support their growth. Today's creators run multi-million media empires using spreadsheets, personal credit cards and direct messaging.
At Passionfroot, we’re developing a no-code tool to help creators build sustainable businesses and reach financial and emotional sustainability. The solo stack combines a storefront, CRM, collaboration features and cash flow management. We help creators monetize, save time and run their business - in one place.
A team fuelled by a more equitable society
What brought us together is a common set of values. As founders with immigration backgrounds raised in Europe and the US, we deeply care about upward economic mobility, the empowerment of individuals and an inclusive society. We envision a future in which everyone can make a living by sharing their truest authentic self.
Over the past years, at least 50 million people started a community, business or brand on digital platforms around a shared passion reaching its peak when the pandemic hit. They see themselves as creators, solopreneurs, influencers, community builders, podcasters, writers, Youtubers...the lines are pretty blurry, but they are part of the creator economy. As people want to work more autonomously and purpose-driven, this market is growing exponentially.
We founded Passionfroot with the belief that the Creator Economy and No-Code can uplift individuality over institutions and enable people to work and live on their own terms.
As we are building for and with creators, we believe in letting them participate in owning equity. That's why we're super excited that some of the creators we worked with in the past months are not only early adopters but also investors in Passionfroot.
In their own words:
“Me and hundreds of creators I know would benefit from Passionfroot’s personal storefront for products and sponsorships. I believe the founders are uniquely positioned to solve this problem!”
- Ali Abdaal (Doctor, Youtuber, Podcaster and Writer, 2.3m YouTube subscribers, Founder of Part-Time YouTuber Academy)
“I use 4 different tools to manage and automate all of my tasks as a creator. Why not have it all in one? Passionfroot tackles one of my daily challenges and that’s exactly why I invested.”
- Celine Willers (Linkedin Top Voice Creator, +100k Followers, Founder of The People Branding Company)
“Podcasters like us want to focus on what we're good at. Having one single place to keep track and manage the business behind it creates enormous value. Passionfroot might take the market by storm.”
- Philipp Klöckner (Podcast Co-Host of Doppelgänger Tech Talk Podcast, 25k weekly listeners, Angel Investor, Advisor)
An equal society must start at the top
Looking at recent numbers, European startups have raised $120bn in funding this year — nearly 3x as much as last year, while funding for female founders or ethnic minority founders dropped to 1.1% from 2.4% in 2020. This makes our funding even more meaningful.
We founded Passionfroot because we're intrinsically motivated to pave the way for the largest shift of economic empowerment and wealth in this generation.
In the startup world, wealth is created through equity ownership on the cap table. We believe wealth inequality starts with equity inequality. Since there is so much potential wealth creation at stake, it's on us as founders to carefully choose who we want our life's work to empower.
When we ran our fundraising process, we asked ourselves:
What distinctive value, insights or network does this investor provide to help us?
Does the investor share our values around diversity, equality and inclusion?
We're glad to have found Creandum as our lead VC alongside early believers, who can advise us on consumer products, no-code & low-code, creator economy, fintech and web3.
Putting together a talented and diverse group of investors who want to win alongside our team was crucial for us to build a global category-defining leader out of Europe:
50% of our angel investors are either women or from underrepresented minorities.
Our board is 75% female.
30% of our angels are creators.
What's next 🔭
We'll be using the funding to develop the product, grow the team and capitalize on our early traction. To build a company around creators, we believe we need to be creators ourselves. We want to build our company alongside creators. Building a company from scratch means that we're tackling often similar problems. Our goal is to create and share educational content, resources and best practices so that creators can grow and scale their businesses in parallel to us.
Creators are currently out there, hustling, creating, sharing, editing - across all sorts of platforms and channels. We want to create a community where they can get together in a unified place, learn and share best practices, get inspired while building their passion empires.
You can join our beta here.
Subscribe to our newsletter here.
Join our team! 🌈
Join us on our mission to empower the independent businesses of tomorrow. We are looking for our founding team members who have the desire to make critical decisions and help us shape Passionfroot. We’re hiring product designers, software engineers and creators! If you want to empower millions of people to make a living with their passion and want to take on a role with unlimited opportunities, apply here.