By
Mayowa Adebajo
May 14th, 2024
The newly-raised funds bring Lolli’s total funding to $10.25 million. Before now, the company raised $5.25 million in two rounds.
Bitcoin rewards company Lolli recently generated $5 million in a pre-Series A round involving a number of prominent investors and American professional tennis player Serena Williams. Lolli announced details of the pre-Series A round on the 24th of March.
Serena Williams Backs New Funding for Lolli
According to the announcement, the funding round was backed by Serena Willams’ Serena Ventures and her husband Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six Ventures and multimedia talent management company Night Media.
Commenting on her investment in Lolli, Williams said:
“I’m excited to announce my investment in Lolli, a company on a mission to make bitcoin more accessible. Earning and owning bitcoin is a step towards financial inclusivity for all people.”
Other investors that participated in the round are Casey Neistat, Cody Ko, Noel Miller, Phil DeFranco, Ian Borthwick, and Gabriel Leydon.
Lolli co-founder and CEO Alex Adelma spoke to The Block on the company’s plan with the new funds. Adelma said Lolli will further its global expansion and will continue to develop its mobile app. The CEO added that Lolli is yet to shortlist any markets. However, the company is currently examining the market with the most demand. To support the ongoing development, Lolli has launched a waitlist for international users. The waitlist will serve as a guide to Lolli to know the next market suitable for expansion.
Lolli’s Funding Totals $10.25 Million
The newly-raised funds bring Lolli’s total funding to $10.25 million. Before now, the company raised $5.25 million in two rounds. Lolli raised $2.25 million in November 2018, the same year the company launched.
In March 2020, Lolli announced that it had secured an additional $3 million in a Seed II funding round. At the time, the company said the round was led by Pathfinder, Founders Fund’s early-stage investment vehicle. Other participants were Michelle Phan, Bain Capital Ventures, Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures. One of the participants, Michelle Phan, said she believed Lolli was the right company to invest in.
Lolli has grown over the years with more than 1,000 merchants and 250,000 users. The company compensates its users with BTC after shopping with any of its merchants.
Adelman stated in an interview:
“We started out with the idea of educating people about bitcoin. So we just attached it to something that everybody does: shop. People think about investing when they think about bitcoin, but there’s probably less than 1% of the world that would consider themselves investors. Everybody would consider themselves a shopper.”
Adelman noted that Bitcoin had surged about 12 times since Lolli launched. Generally, the crypto space has been expanding as Bitcoin and altcoins pull in gains. Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently announced that people can now buy the company’s electric vehicles with Bitcoin. At press time, Bitcoin is down 5.90% to $53,086.59.