Korean startup TeamBlind, the operator of ‘Blind,’ a social networking platform for office workers, has attracted approximately 41.6 billion won or $37 million of Series C investment. The startup that caters to corporate employees, who want to vent out their workplace woes anonymously, has gained innumerable users in the USA. The company is planning to accelerate a public listing on the NASDAQ by 2025.
Solid investment from reputed investors
Launched in South Korea in 2014 and the US in 2015, the Blind app is a message board for users to discuss, debate, and even gossip about anything related to the corporate world workforce like company policies, workplace politics, or harassment and compensations.
In the latest funding round, existing investment companies, Storm Ventures and DCM Ventures of the United States, increased their stake. Also, global investment managers such as Main Street Investment, US Cisco Investment, and Singapore Pavilion Capital have newly joined. The involvement of Temasek, Pavilion Capital is notable as its parent company is notable.
Temasek is the world’s largest state-owned investment company owned 100 % by the Singapore government. It has distinguished investment portfolios such as Airbnb, Alibaba, and Tencent. It is famous for its conservative fund management. It selectively invests only in firms with guaranteed fund recovery to obtain the highest credit rating AAA from the two major credit rating firms Moody’s and S&P.
Corona era ups the stakes for Blind app
Investors cited the industry prospect that the demand for Blind app will increase further after the Coronavirus as a background for making this investment. Honda Oske, DCM Ventures General Partner, said, “Blind is a platform that can meet the communication needs of office workers in the era of Corona, where meetings are difficult.”
With credible success in the domestic market, TeamBlind had set up offices in Silicon Valley. And soon enough, thousands of employees from top-notch companies like Uber, Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and top tech companies in the USA started using ‘Blind’ to express their thoughts and opinions. As per a media report, the app is being used by employees of over 2000 tech companies in the USA.
Sung-wook Moon, CEO of TeamBlind, said, “We set up our headquarters in Silicon Valley in the US with the goal of global expansion from the time of establishment. We will take a leap forward.”
Blind is the second most certified white-collar service after LinkedIn in the United States. The number of subscribers is more than 5 million in the US and Korea. The average stay time is 40 minutes per day, characterized by solid user loyalty equivalent to YouTube (46 minutes). In Korea, over 85% of workers in companies with 300 or more incumbent use Blind.
TeamBlind launched last year’s corporate insight platform Blind Hub and recruitment service Blind Hire and is trying to secure aggressive talents to develop profit models and advance products. This month, Yuk-young, who served as product heads for Intuit, Glassdoor, and Yelp, was hired as Chief Product Officer (CPO).
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