Lounge, a UK-based community platform has raised $4 million in funding. The investment round was led by Square Peg known for backing startups such as Neara and Partly. The oversubscribed round also saw participation from Carthona Capital invested in its pre-seed round and private investors.
Lounge plans to use the funds to build its team and take the product to the next level of maturity.
Gen Z community platform
Founded in London in 2022 by Wulfie Bain and Australian expat Jack Symonds, Lounge is a digital platform that allows users to organise events and groups in seconds, without a newsfeed. It is focused on building ‘tech for good’, giving young people a space to organise groups and events without the noise and toxicity of traditional social media.
The platform enables users to create communities and discover groups, with the idea being there are no other app functionalities to distract them from connecting with others. Lounge is making waves in Gen Z community-organisation taking ground in the space left by Facebook’s decline among the under-30s.
Currently, around a quarter of a million people have used the software.
“Somewhere between a Whatsapp group and a subreddit” is how the team described it; “our users like the structure and the simplicity of the experience, in contrast to more chaotic group chats”. The business is built on the thesis that “the decline of Facebook among young people will leave behind whitespace” which so far is proving to be true – the platform is used on almost every major university campus in the UK and Ireland, with some early usage in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
Co-founder Wulfie Bain said: “Most of our competitors are multi-billion dollar companies or oligopolies – so consumer standards for product are high. The team are really focused on improving the platform every day and strengthening our points of difference. We’re lucky to have investors who have gone through this journey before”.
Dean Dorrell from Carthona Capital commented: “Jack and Wulfie came to us with just an idea 18 months ago and now they have a widely-used product in multiple countries, it’s been great to see the consistent progress”.
Dan Krasnostein from Square Peg commented: “The team is extremely high calibre, moving incredibly fast, and they are winning market share every day. Each call has significant updates – it’s really exciting.”
