coindesk.com
Hang, a Web3-powered platform connecting brands with members, launched Thursday and announced raising $16 million in a Series A round led by Paradigm. The funding will be used to double down on the expansion of the product, engineering and go-to-market teams with a focus on “speed and scaling,” Hang co-founder and CEO Matt Smolin told CoinDesk in an email.
Other investors in the round included Tiger Global, Thirty Five Ventures, Night Ventures and Warby Parker and Allbirds founder Good Friends, among others.
The Hang platform lets program managers set up membership rules, add benefits and rewards and connect third-party services.
The membership programs utilize non-fungible tokens (NFT) to incentivize customers with rewards and perks. Interoperability means brands can connect with customers no matter where they are located in the digital or physical world.
“Between the democratization of e-commerce infrastructure making it easier than ever to create a new brand and new privacy changes from Apple and Meta, it has never been more expensive for brands to acquire customers and incentivize high value actions,” explained Smolin.
“Hang offers brands a new way to offset these acquisition costs and increase the value of their existing user base, by harnessing the unique advantages of NFT technology to transform the relationship they have with their customers and build a new one rooted in shared incentives, reciprocity, and community,” he continued.
Hang is already collaborating with a slate of global brands, including Budweiser, Pinkberry, Bleacher Report and Superfly, the company behind the Outside Lands and Bonnaroo music festivals.
Hang backer Paradigm is one of the largest investment firms in the crypto industry. Last November, the firm launched a record-setting $2.5 billion fund, which was topped in May by a $4.5 billion fund from Andreessen Horowitz.