Toronto’s PumpUp has raised $2.4 million from General Catalyst Partners, for its photo-sharing community for healthy and active living.
The funding will go towards attracting more users, hiring more employees and to further develop the app, which currently has over 1.7 million users.
PumpUp calls itself “the leading social network for those interested in a healthy, active lifestyle.” The PumpUp app combines photo sharing, community and fitness tracking, immersing members into a comfortable and positive community where they can share content around their personal fitness goals, progress, healthy meals, mental health, and more.
Last time we checked in with the Toronto startup, cofounders Garrett Gottlieb and Phil Jacobson had pitched the investors on CBC’s Dragons’ Den, which served to be an interesting event in terms of the value of pitching on such tv shows, startup valuations and the “homerun potential” of apps.
They ended up declining one of the Dragons’ offers, and it looks like they never looked back.
“We’re delighted to announce the closing of our seed round,” said Jacobson. “As the PumpUp community has quickly grown to over 1.7 million members, we’ve seen countless inspiring stories come to life. From members gaining the confidence to share the very first photo of their body publicly, to members seeking support, to members simply sharing and discovering healthy meal ideas. The community we’ve cultivated is a positive, comfortable space where members come together to share, support, and motivate each other.”
Interestingly, 90 percent of Pumpup’s users are women.
Additional investors included Azure Capital Partners, Relay Ventures, Freycinet Investments, and a number of angel investors.
“With PumpUp, we’re leveraging mobile technology to connect like-minded individuals across the planet who would have never met otherwise,” said Gottlieb. “The connections made on PumpUp are transforming the lives of millions. We’ve already started to expand our company with the top engineers in Canada and the US so we can continue to deliver world-class experiences to our rapidly growing user base.”