- Fishbowl, a social network that is used by hundreds of thousands of professionals chatting daily about their work-life, announced it raised $5.3 million in Series A funding
Fishbowl — a social network that is used by hundreds of thousands of professionals chatting daily about their work-life — announced recently that it raised $5.3 million in Series A funding. Including this funding round, the company has raised $7.5 million in total funding. This round of funding was led by GGV Capital with Alex Zhu, design head at TikTok.
Essentially, Fishbowl empowers professionals to congregate online across industries and to have candid and open conversations with others in their field and company. Fishbowl’s users include CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, widely recognized industry thought leaders and junior analysts.
Fishbowl has especially seen adoption in the advertising, consulting, and accounting industries. And within these industries, Fishbowl has become a place for young professionals to engage C-Suite leaders on topics important to them and for marginalized groups to congregate and support one another.
Fishbowl plans to utilize the funding to expand its reach across industries with plans to open up to professionals in the law, entertainment, healthcare, and tech verticals. And Fishbowl will be launching to professionals working in law in January 2020. Recently, Fishbowl launched to the education community, creating a channel-specific to kindergarten through grade 12 teachers and educators in the U.S.
“Current professional networks lack a space where users can share moments and candid thoughts from their work lives in the same way they do with their personal lives. We want to change how professionals converse with one another within companies and industries to create community and transparency that leads to positive change,” said Fishbowl CEO & Co-founder Matt Sunbulli.
Fishbowl started out with the mission of providing a platform for authentic conversations among professionals after the founders experienced the siloed culture and impact of big corporations. And Fishbowl captured significant percentages of employees at brand name companies across industries, spanning all ranges of seniority. Over 75% of US professionals at Boston Consulting Group and 40% of US professionals at the advertising holding company Publicis are registered on the platform. And users spend on average 15 minutes a day on the mobile app.
“As digital natives, Millennials and Gen-Z want to build more meaningful relationships and share all aspects of their lives in the workplace. The team at Fishbowl is taking professional social networks beyond old school rolodex to build relevance and community in a single product,” added GGV Capital Managing Partner Hans Tung.
