The seed round was co- led by Harlem Capital and Crossbeam Venture Partners.
The seed adds Gander founder Kimiloluwa Fafowora to the growing list of Black women who have raised $1 million or more in venture capital funding. According to Fafowora, the idea for Gander came from her own desires as an online shopper.
A lot of the elements that are helpful for bringing products to life aren't online.
She launched Gander, which collects user-generated video content into retail sites so shoppers can see what a product looks like in real life. The creator marketplace gives brands access to the video content. With fresh capital, Fafowora wants to increase hiring on her sales and engineering teams.
Fafowora continued, "We built our product in such a way that we get important data that will help e- commerce brands just humanize their stores in a way that makes them accessible." The customer feels happy when shopping.
Fafowora knew she wanted to humanize online shopping when she attended the graduate school. She was busy with research, product experimentation and networking.
After her product's launch, it gained a lot of traction and has already secured some high-profile clients, though she wouldn't say who. It took less than three months for Gander to finish its seed. Early in the year, Fafowora said raising money wasn't a priority. Soon investors flooded her with offers because of the word of her company.
She said they had term sheets.
“A lot of the elements that are really helpful for bringing products to life don’t really exist online.” Kimiloluwa Fafowora, founder of Gander
Fafowora met Henri Pierre-Jacques and Ryan Morgan through other investors. She said the two understood where she wanted the company to go.
Morgan said that brands needed to find ways to connect and communicate with customers authentically. Kimiloluwa has experience scaling e-commerce brands, which has led her to develop a solution to better the communication between online brands and consumers.
Pierre- Jacques added to that. He believes that Gander is the evolution for user-generated content for brands.
A collection of venture scouts and angels received additional funding.
Fafowora is at Gander a full circle moment. She is from an entrepreneurial family and wanted to start her own business. For the longest time, she couldn't decide on how to achieve her dream of crafting her own future while helping others.
She was working as a strategist and the light bulb was on. She felt as if there was something missing from their online strategies. Someone should do something about that, she thought.
Fafowora plans to focus on scaling her company with a goal of helping brands more easily reach shoppers while also leaning into using creators to interact with consumers to help them with buying decisions.
She said that this is part of her dream to help bring about a new era of e- commerce.
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