Finland's Blidz raises €6 mn seed funding to expand in western markets

The seed funding was led by General Catalyst and Peak with participation from D4 Ventures (Hanzade Dogan), Illusian Capital (Ilkka Paananen), Fabric Ventures, FJ Labs as well as existing investor IPR.VC. A group of angels such as Youngme Moon, Christopher North and Don Hoang also participated in the heavily oversubscribed round, Peak said in a media release.

“Western online shopping is behind the curve on social adoption. Blidz’s goal is to liberate consumers from expensive and boring shopping experiences by letting them leverage their own activity and social networks to get the best value-for-money products anywhere. Western consumers embrace social and gamified solutions. Blidz sees that there is large untapped potential in e-commerce to put our users first and continue building our value-capturing shopping app. Having General Catalyst and Peak on board makes Blidz fully equipped to change western e-commerce as never been seen before,” Blidz’s co-founder Lasse Diercks, said.

“The Blidz founding team has a number of unique insights relating to the evolution of online commerce. They are creating a new customer experience in the west by combining social media, gaming, and shopping into a data-driven entertaining and easy-to-use platform. General Catalyst is excited to see what emerges from this talented team,” Adam Valkin, managing director at General Catalyst, commented on the funding.

“We at Peak met with Lasse and Markus early in their journey. Their grit proved, beyond a doubt, that they are the team that can succeed in socialising western e-commerce. As consumer behaviour is increasingly inclining towards social shopping, Peak believes that the timing is right and is thrilled to partner with Lasse, Markus and the Blidz team,” Indra Sharma, partner at Peak, said.

Lasse Diercks (CEO) and Markus Haverinen (CPTO) founded Blidz to transform western e-commerce through social and gamified mechanics.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (SF)