Canon Beach, Oregon, U.S.A. PC: Jamison McAndie
Today, on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in London, I announced that Pepo has raised $2.3 million in seed financing from Tencent, Greycroft, Vectr, Correlation, Oriente, Pepo’s founder Jason Goldberg (myself), Nishith Shah, and other investors.
In the 20 minute interview I talk about startups, failure, socialmedian, Donald Trump, and diversity, and also about Pepo’s new financing.
Pepo is a new messaging platform that connects you with people who share your passions.
Pepo was founded in February 2016 and the Pepo app for iPhone and Android devices launched on 27 October, 2016.
Pepo is founded by myself (Product Lead), Sunil Khedar (CTO) and the product development team that built Fab.com, Hem.com, and Social Median. Sunil and I have worked together since 2008. Pepo’s primary offices are in Berlin, Germany & Pune, India.
We are grateful that such accomplished investors believe in our vision for Pepo.
In previous posts I have written about the emotional and professional challenges involved with overcoming extreme failure in business. I’m perhaps most thankful today that 7 of the 10 — ever board members from my previous company, Fab, are now involved with Pepo. Thank you for your renewed partnership and support. Your continued belief in our team is humbling.
Pepo connects you with people who share your passions
A Gazillion Avocado Toasts.
The idea for Pepo was inspired by my experience trying to pursue one of my unique passions: avocado toast. Last Christmas my husband Chris and I were walking around Sydney and we had a craving for avocado toast. We searched Google but we weren’t satisfied with the static results. We posted a question on Facebook but our post got lost in the stream and didn’t reach anyone who was in-the-know. It hit me that it should be possible to instantly connect with other avocado toast enthusiasts around the world, instantly, via a messaging platform that connects friends, friends of friends, people nearby, people with unique passions and expertise, indexible, always searchable – and that avocado toast was just 1 of gazillions of use cases for such a service.
We’ve all been there before: Your friends email you asking for the same tips and recommendations over and over again. Maybe it’s for mom’s chicken soup recipe. Or, maybe it’s for that great sushi place in Tokyo. Or maybe it’s for an expert in email marketing.
Enter Pepo.
Democratizing Interests, Expertise, & Passions.
We believe that there is an interesting untapped need and opportunity to connect people with shared interests, expertise, and passions. While other messaging platforms optimize on the people you already know, Pepo connects you with the people you want to know and the stories you want to be part of. We have a big long-term vision to democratize the market for shared passions— enabling people to instantly connect with experts and people in-the-know around the world.
We are taking an incremental approach to building towards that big vision. Our entire focus right now is on Pepo member engagement — every week we ship new features designed to help Pepo’s members get more value from the platform. So far we are encouraged by the results as nearly 50% of Pepo’s members are using Pepo weekly, but we also know that it’s still early days, it’s a hyper competitive market, and that gaining traction and continuing engagement with consumer apps is always challenging. Put simply: We have an uphill road to climb and we have a lot of work to do!
Today on Pepo you can create and join public, private, and secret live conversations on any topic.
Add up to 6 “interest & expertise tags” to your profile and Pepo instantly connects you with people and conversations that match your passions.
The rest is up to you.
Pepo is a platform and you can take it any direction you’d like. While Pepo is only a couple of weeks old, already thousands of people turn to Pepo every day to share their stories and connect with experts and enthusiasts. Travelers. Foodies. Fans. Politicos. Designers. Dog Lovers. Airline Geeks. Blockchain enthusiasts. Gym Fits. LGBT’s.
No matter your interests, Pepo connects you with the people and voices that matter most to you.
Get Pepo. Follow Your Passions.
Pepo for iPhone. Pepo for Android.
A Final Word On Fundraising
Raising money is not a victory unto itself, rather it’s an enabler. Raising money represents opportunity and responsibility.
Thank you again to our investors for providing us with your resources and your confidence to pursue our big vision. We promise to respect your investment and to do our best to create value.