London-based Gro has closed a $7.1 million seed round with the aim of making decentralised finance more accessible.
The round was led by decentralised finance VCs Galaxy Digital and Framework Ventures, and saw participation from Variant, Nascent, a_capital, and Northzone. Angel investors including founders of DeFi protocols Aave, Compound and Synthetix also contributed.
Co-founded in 2020 by former VP of Growth at Revolut Hannes Graah, Gro’s existing team is composed of former Revolut, Spotify, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley professionals.
The mission at Gro is simple: give users the tools they need, it terms they can understand to create wealth through the combination of decentralised (nu-school) and legacy (old-skool) finance.
But what about just playing it safe and staying old skool? Fueled by a global pandemic, old skool interest rates are at record lows, with some banks actually charging customers just to receive deposits. This creates a huge vacuum for returns.
To satisfy this demand, many consumers have shifted their thinking, and their money, to cryptocurrencies based on the compelling returns this speculation can offer. DeFi, on the other hand, allows consumers to digitise their pounds and/or dollars to gain a yield from emerging financial services, but without speculating (betting) on the price of bitcoin, for example.
If all of this sounds a bit complicated, it is. And that’s exactly what Gro is aiming to fix. Through a series of products, Gro is offering customised solutions that balance a users yield and risk preference.
“DeFi enables a more efficient service stack through open collaboration and competition. This allows creation of more value, but instead of distributing it like a bank, we want to build for the ownership economy,” comments Gro co-founder and CEO Hannes Graah.
Editor's note: Degen mode 🤣
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