Icebreaker, a NYC-based open professional network, raised $5m in seed funding.
The round was led by CoinFund, with participation from Accomplice, Anagram, Legion Capital, and more than 30 founder angels.
The company intends to use the funds to grow its team and further its progress toward scaling the internet’s open, verifiable, and trusted professional network.
Led by co-founders Dan Stone and Jack Dillé, Icebreaker allows anyone to instantly prove credentials about themselves, provide verifiable endorsements for others, and use this shared context to freely search the entirety of their network. Anyone can create curated, high-context profiles based on one or more existing identities like LinkedIn, GitHub, X, or Farcaster by visiting icebreaker.xyz and logging in with email, Farcaster, or Ethereum Wallet. Professionals can signal their networking status, skill, work experience, professional highlights, and verified credentials, in addition to linking and optionally verifying their choice of more than 50 account types. Current and former colleagues can endorse each other with just two taps while seeing who else in their network is making and receiving endorsements. Most importantly, every professional can search the entirety of their network for free, forever, using more powerful filters than competitors who charge thousands of dollars annually.
Icebreaker piloted early iterations of the platform through engagements with other Web3 companies such as Coinbase, Opensea, and Polygon Labs, and at industry conferences like DevConnect in Istanbul and FarCon in Santa Monica. Last year, they debuted their first Passport program at Station3, a Web3 co-working space and innovation hub. The program has allowed founder Bob Loukas to track verified engagement with Station3 programming, whether the members are physically at the headquarters in downtown Manhattan, or checking in digitally from around the world.
This summer, the team of six will focus on bringing new social graphs into the application on behalf of users as well as promoting connectivity through professional skill endorsements and recommendations.
FinSMEs
31/07/2024