Irish mobile chat start-up Quorum has secured $2 million in seed round funding that will enable it to expand its team and accelerate the growth of its subscription chat platform.
Founded by three Irish engineers, Quorum lets creators and service providers communicate directly to their clients via chat, with enhanced features to moderate, manage users and monetise the interactions.
The seed round funding for the Dublin based start-up was led by Adjacent and LocalGlobe, with additional backing from Amaranthine and Y Combinator.
Quorum says it is giving creators more control and opportunity to directly monetise their services to a small group of loyal fans or customers, rather than advertising products to a much larger audience. Some early users include business coaches, personal stylists, and learning and development groups.
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"Micro-businesses are under added pressure to provide services digitally as a consequence of Covid-19, and we’re incredibly excited to make it easy for them to build a paid community," said Patrick Finlay, CEO of Quorum.
"We found that creators were concerned about a whole range of missing features from current chat platforms. Simple things like having no control over what kind of media was shared by participants, to bigger problems around privacy and participant data being accessible to all group members, make it a frustrating experience to try and host these conversations on other platforms."
The company is currently recruiting for its product team in areas of engineering and design.
The founding team of Patrick Finlay, Romy Lynch and David Newell were previously selected to take part in Y Combinator’s programme in San Francisco with the original idea of creating tools for community builders through their former product, Monaru.
After realising the range of administration features missing from current chat platforms, the team pivoted to chat, founding Quorum.
Nico Wittenborn of investors Adjacent commented: "Messaging is currently built around free – and eventually ad-supported – many-to-many communication, while Quorum is building a solution for those that are or could be using text-based communication to earn their livelihood and drive income.
"I am excited to team up with Quorum and LocalGlobe to build the foundation for this future."
Source: Written based on press release
