Bimble’s TV début
To the moon! 🚀
Well. That was quite the week at Bimble:) : we released the social features of followers and following for the Bimble iOS app AND we announced the close of our recent investment round. Some of you may have seen it in the news, but we wanted to let you in on the back story.
Startup rollercoaster in a world gone awol
For so many of us, 2020 was indescribably tough. That was, of course, the case at Bimble HQ. Launching a new app for places a few weeks before global lockdown was brutal! Despite our best efforts, we had to lose several team members and drastically cut our budgets.
But we never stopped believing in the future. And that was thanks to all of you because — despite the backdrop of awful — the Bimble community just kept on growing and growing and growing! Since launching in February last year, our community has grown to over 77k active members 🙌🏽 — like-minded Bimblers who love to collect, share and celebrate great little places in neighbourhoods close to home or on the far side of the world.
As the very last of our cash was running out, early in 2021, we decided that, though the world was still in flux, we couldn’t wait any longer to raise the capital we needed. We knew the market was still unsteady but we had a good story to tell and an amazing community of members and independent businesses to champion. What came next was extraordinary. Against all the odds, in eight short weeks, we smashed our initial target of £750k and raised an incredible £1.8m in new funds. Bimble angels, thank you! 🙏🏽
Lockdown taught us so many things. Top of that list is RESILIENCE: Bimblers who continue listing and sharing great little places (even whilst stuck at home), independent business owners who battled through the crisis, key workers who showed up every day to deliver essential services and children who learned in new ways. Lockdown also taught us that whilst we couldn’t be international by travelling around, we could connect with people everywhere and build relationships. We could reach out and find inspiring people to work with in interesting places.
So, we changed our strategy and started recruiting wherever the very best talent was. We now have an amazing and diverse team. We have opened an office in Kyiv, Ukraine — a world class centre for software developers. We have an advisory board with members in Silicon Valley, Singapore and New York. And we have new recruits in Oxford, where the founding team is based. We’ve also invested in young talent with five team members found through the government kickstart programme and working remotely.
A time for firsts:
We’ve had our first ever television appearance too! Dubbed CNBC for millennials, the American TV programme, Cheddar News, which is broadcast out of the New York Stock Exchange, interviewed us on Wednesday.
All that remains to be said is thank you to all of you. Thank you for joining Bimble, and for believing in our mission to build a platform for places that represents today’s consumer. No ratings and reviews and no ranting. Just plain and simple peer to peer place recommendations from around the world.
We love to hear from the Bimble community, so please know that our door is always open. Do get in touch with feedback and commentary whether positive or negative.
And as it is Saturday, we have updated the Bimble pick of the week. It was a monster week on Bimble — we had so many fantastic Bimbles to choose from!
