Frond launches a better way to build community online, announces $3.3m pre-seed round

We’re excited to announce our pre-seed round of $3.3m led by Cherry Ventures. Additional investors include Icehouse Ventures, WndrCo, Script Capital, Tiny VC, Remote First Capital, 468 Capital, Jack Altman, Dylan Field, Arash Ferdowsi, Mario Götze, Rich Miner, Andy Rachleff, Alex Ljung, Spencer Lazar, James Beshara, Jonah Greenberger, Ben Max Rubinstein, Brian Norgard, Farbood Nivi, Dave Balter, James Crownover, Mac Dunwoody, Lindsay Ullman, Liu Jiang, Anil Dharni, Philipp Wein, Scott Cannon, Ram Gudavalli, Andrew Lippman, Itxaso del Palacio, Tony DeVincenzi, Sara Lannin, Flo Meissner, Humberto Ayres Pereira, Fred Stevens-Smith, Russel Smith.

Why we’re building Frond

We’ve been working as a remote team since day one. This experience has made it crystal clear to us that community is a superpower. No matter your goal, a meaningful community will get you there faster and make the journey a joy.

We believe building community online is too hard, and that’s because our tools are failing us. Social media emphasizes our differences because its business is attention rather than community. And chat tools work well enough at the start—but become chaotic and overwhelming as they grow.

Our communities deserve better.

That’s why Frond is built on threads instead of chat. Every thread starts with something rich: photos, videos, links, or long-form writing. Threads are organized into groups, which your community can shape as it grows. And your feed is personalized so that you’re focused on the conversations that matter to you.

Add all this up and you’ve got a platform that can grow and scale alongside communities in ways chat can’t.

Frond was founded by Matt Blackshaw and Jan Senderek in San Francisco, but has been a fully remote team since day one. Matt previously was a co-founder of Sold, and Jan a co-founder of Loom. Both companies were acquired by Dropbox.

Mission East Inc.

576 Shotwell St #2, San Francisco, CA 94110

[email protected]

www.frond.com

PDF version

20230207 Frond press release.pdf