- Web3-based messaging API startup Notifi Network raised $2.5 million in a pre-seed funding round.
- The pre-seed round was led by Race Capital and Hashed.
- Notifi, led by ex-Circle Product Director Paul Kim, aims to become the Twilio (NYSE:TWLO) of Web 3.0.
A new challenger in the Web 3.0 arms race announced that it bagged up to $2.5 million in a pre-seed funding round to become the decentralized messaging API version of Twilio.
Notifi Network, a startup based in Seattle, WA, said that the fund will be used to jumpstart the development of its Notifi Beta. According to information sent to CoinQuora, this will provide a messaging infrastructure for decentralized applications (DeFi) that is blockchain agnostic.
The pre-seed round saw the participation of Race Capital, a VC firm that made prophetic investments in FTX, Solana, and Lightning Labs. Co-leading the funding round was Hashed, an investment firm based in South Korea and Silicon Valley.
According to investors, Notifi Network attracted their attention due to the impressive track record of its founders. Race Capital General Partner Chris McCann lauded the previous experience of Notifi’s execs at tech pacemakers Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Oracle (NYSE:ORCL):
[Notifi CEO] Paul Kim and [CTO] Nimesh Amin started their careers at Amazon Web Services and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. They are frustrated by the lack of enterprise-grade notifications for Web3. Given their skill sets and expertise in the communication technology stack, I believe Paul and Nimesh will redefine how Web3 communications work.
Meanwhile, Kim was previously the Director of Product at Circle. During his tenure, he led the launching of Circle Yield. As the chief of Notifi, Kim expressed his vision of becoming the Web 3.0 version of Twilio.
I am building Notifi to be the Twilio and the de facto messaging protocol for blockchain so we can help developers and projects to start building long-term relationships with their users, Kim said.