Blossom Social, a Vancouver Fintech start-up building Canada’s first social brokerage, announced today the completion of a $750K CAD funding round, bringing the company’s total funding to over $1M CAD. Ryan Holmes, the founder of Hootsuite, and Manny Padda, NACO’s 2016 Angel Investor of the Year, participated in the round with their new fund LOI Venture alongside prominent finance YouTubers Brandon Beavis and Shay Huang.
Founded in 2021 by co-founders Maxwell Nicholson, Kartik Bhutani, and Annika Ng, Blossom enables investors to see the portfolios and trades of friends, and gain investing insights from others in the community. Unlike Reddit or Discord, posts on Blossom are backed up by real activity from a user’s linked brokerage accounts. Users can also complete lessons about new companies and industries to earn money in the app.
Since their launch on the App Store and Google Play this May, Blossom has grown to over 2,000 users and was recently chosen as 1 of 12 start-ups in Google’s Accelerator Program for Women Founders.
With the new investment, Blossom’s CEO Maxwell Nicholson says the next step is becoming their own full-service brokerage, enabling users to buy/sell stocks directly in Blossom:
“By building a stock trading platform with a social community embedded, we’re breaking down the barriers to investing. Rather than jumping in head first on your own, on Blossom, you can see what friends and other investors are doing and learn with the support of the community.”
Nicholson adds that Blossom’s mission is to create an inclusive community for everyone to learn and share investing knowledge, and believes that making investing more social makes it more accessible.
A recent survey from Public and Finimize shows that Gen-Z’s and Millenials are much more social with their finances, finding that 64% of 18 to 29-year-olds discuss investments with friends vs. only 38% of investors over 66. Following this trend, social brokerages have sprung up around the world, with Public in the US and Shares in the UK making waves in the media. Nicholson says Blossom plans to be the first to launch such a platform in Canada.
In addition to his investment, Brandon Beavis, a Canadian finance YouTuber with nearly 200K subscribers, joins the team as a strategic advisor, adding:
“In my 5 years as a finance YouTuber, I’ve never been more excited about a new venture. I truly believe Blossom has the potential to reshape the Canadian investing landscape and am honoured to be part of the team and share Blossom with my community.”