Lounge, a British social media startup aiming to capitalise on “Facebook’s decline” among a Gen Z audience, has raised $4m (£3.2m) in funding.
Lounge has created a platform for users to organise events and engage in communities.
Unlike most social media platforms, Lounge doesn’t have a newsfeed. The startup says this prevents “mindless scrolling” and encourages users to participate in communities.
Its founders – Jack Symonds and Wulfie Bain – describe the platform as “somewhere between a WhatsApp group and a subreddit”.
Launched in April 2022, Lounge says it is used on most major university campuses in the UK and Ireland. It has had some pickup in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
A Lounge spokesperson told UKTN that “since its launch two years ago, a quarter of a million people have used the platform”.
Gen Z, the generation currently aged between 11 and 26, has been moving away from Facebook. The share of 13- to 17-year-olds who said they use Facebook dropped from 71% in 2015 to 32% in 2022, according to data from the Pew Research Center.
The London-headquartered startup currently employs 13 people.
The seed funding round was led by global technology investor Square Peg, which has backed the likes of payments firms Airwallex and Stripe.
The “oversubscribed” equity funding also attracted backing from Carthona Capital, which invested in Lounge’s pre-seed round earlier this year.
“There was an instant respect and cultural fit that has continued and improved since the first meeting,” said Symonds on Square Peg’s investment.
“We were also incredibly fortunate to have Carthona Capital join us from day one. They have added value essentially every four weeks since we started, and they doubled down on their investment in the second round – you can’t ask for more”.
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