- Public.com, a commission-free stock investing company, announced it raised $15 million in Series B funding
Public.com, a commission-free stock investing company, announced it raised $15 million in Series B funding. This round of funding was led by Accel and Greycroft with participation from Dreamers VC (founded by Will Smith and Japanese soccer star Keisuke Honda), NFL star J.J. Watt, Liontree Ventures, PLG Ventures, Advancit Capital (Shari Redstone), Sophia Amoruso (founder and CEO of Girlboss), YouTube star Casey Neistat, Scott Belsky (Adobe chief product officer), Morgan DeBaun (Blavity founder and CEO Morgan DeBaun), and Michael Vaughan (former COO of Venmo). Neistat is joining the advisory board of the company.
The app built by Public allows users to buy and sell fractional shares of companies. And its user interface has social elements akin to Venmo. Plus you can follow your friends and other public profiles to see what others are buying and selling.
“People see investing in the stock market as a daunting process,” said Public.com co-CEO Jannick Malling via Variety. And Public co-CEO Leif Abraham told Variety that the company decided to work with celebrity investors for this round in order to “bring influencers on to the app so that we can build the next generation of investors.”
So far, Public.com has raised $24 million in total funding. And there are 35 employees that work for the company.
“Public.com challenges this century-old model by bringing conversations about investing out into the open,” said Greycroft co-founder and partner Ian Sigalow in a written statement sent to Crunchbase News. “By adding a social layer to the stock market, investing becomes a collaborative experience that makes it possible to strengthen your understanding alongside friends and experts.”
Public.com generates revenue from the interest earned on cash sitting in user accounts. And the company makes money from fees by lending stock to short-sellers along with receiving rebates on stock transactions. In the future, the company may offer premium features.
Before launching Public, Jannick was co-founder and CEO of Tradable (now owned by CFH Group’s parent company Playtech). Abraham was previously the co-founder and CEO of And Co (acquired by Fiverr in 2018).
This round of funding will go towards growing the broad community of investors who bring a range of perspectives and domain expertise to the platform.
