Rise, a professional staffing site, raised at least $750,000 in a pre-seed round. CrunchBase says the round was led by BAM Ventures and Dispatch Ventures, but CEO Vivian Chen tells the 4thEst8 the raise was in SAFE’s.
Vivian Chen, Rise CEO
“The first time I attempted fundraising was the third week of February 2020,” CEO Vivian Chen told the 4thEst8. “The whole world just kind of shut down.”
Rise bills itself as a professional social network. It uses badges, ice breakers and other interactions for people and companies to build relationships prior to hiring. Chen launched the company in 2019 from New York, where she’s lived since 2009, although she is from St. Louis.
In our interview, Chen said she then just dug into building her company in a ‘mostly bootstrapped’ manner… but entered a couple pitch competitions last fall. After one, she was approached by an investor and subsequently closed a pre-seed round of which she declined to disclose details. She told the 4thEst8 she promised reporters at FastCompany and Business Insider that information as an exclusive.
Digging around on CrunchBase revealed the round was led by BAM Ventures and Dispatch Ventures, something Chen disputed. Sorting through Chen’s Twitter feed found the rest.
See her pitch on Stonks.com where she claims $35,000 in monthly revenue and 20,000 professionals on her platform as well as 50 customers, including DataDog, Gemini, Lattice, Coda and Hopin.
A Tweet from Stonks uses video of Chen lauding the pitch platform for helping her close her pre-seed round. In that Tweet Stonks claims the round was for $750,000, a figure Chen later confirmed via email.
Let’s see how did Vivian’s time on Stonks go:
– Presented the perfect pitch to an amazing panel ✅
– Received over 60 introductions to angels and LP’s ✅
– Raised over $700K on her terms to close Pre-Seed ✅But don’t take our word for it, here’s Vivian in her own words: pic.twitter.com/fzlJnHIq8N
— Sandhill Markets (@sandhill_mkts) January 20, 2022
Links:
On the 4thEst8:
UPDATE: Minutes after publication Chen corrected the $700,000 figure to at least $750,000, adding “the figure is not total.” She also corrected the CrunchBase report, saying the raise was in SAFE’s.
