Party Round’s rebrand is banking on founder bank accounts • TechCrunch

Party Round wants you to know that the party isn’t over. In fact, it just rebranded, put the music just a little bit lower and finally put out some appetizers. After a certain point, don’t we all get peckish?

Party Round announced today that it has rebranded to Capital to underscore its product expansion. Now, the startup won’t just make it easier for other startups to raise their own party round. Capital wants to build a tech stack for the modern founder to handle their finances, a crowded space, but one always in need of more disruption.

Up until this point, the startup was focused on automating seed deals for the likes of Diagram, Popshop, JuneShine and Yuga Labs. Plus, as CEO and co-founder Jordi Hays will admit, lots and lots of marketing.

“Party Round was this amazing, living breathing meme that was evolving and meant to entertain the community,” Hays, who built the company alongside Sarah Chase, said. “But the thing is, even our ambition as a company, and what we want to do on the product side, is [different]. Fundraising and investing gets so much attention in the startup media, but it’s maybe like 1-5% of what it actually takes to build a company.”

“We were very comfortable saying that in the first 18 months of building this company, we’re going to ignore every single possible channel except tech Twitter, and that was like the best possible strategy we could have done,” the founder said. “There’s 100,000 early-stage founders and investors signed up for our email list.”

Capital wants to take that trust and expressed interest and give the same founders a place to raise, hold and spend that earned capital. It’s a maturation for the company, which raised $7 million months ago from Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six fund, Anish Acharya from a16z, Shrug Capital, Packy McCormick, Nik Sharma and Austin Rief.

Here’s the simplest way to describe what Capital does today: Founders can turn to the platform to create and set terms for SAFE notes, and then invite potential investors to contribute through the platform. Investors, meanwhile, can select to link their banking account to invest in the company through either USD or crypto with specific allocation; all while Capital handles back-end documents. There’s an NFT to verify the investment if investors are interested in NFTs that verify the investment.

Once the money is wired, founders can use Capital to create a business checking account, get a debit card and conduct payments. Hays explained how a founder who uses Ramp for creidt cards can then connect their Ramp account to Capital; same goes for if someone was using Rippling for payroll. Capital’s utility is that it gives all those fintech tools one home to live, or, some would say, one living room to party at.

Hays isn’t too intimidated by the unicorns in the space, noting that many (such as Brex and Ramp) started with expense tracking and are heavily focused on the enterprise, while Capital seeks to work with smaller startups at the point of their first fundraise.

“Before you need a bank account, you need money to put in that bank account. And unless you’re bootstrapping, or generating revenue, really, really early on and self funding, typically those funds are coming from your investors,” Hays said. “We are exclusively focused on companies at the inflection point and figuring out how we can be the first place that they raise, hold and spend their money.”

The challenge for Capital is if it can prove that its users, a number which remains undisclosed, are sticky enough to stay. Up until now, the company’s fundraising tool was free with some simple steps: create a round, configure the SAFE terms and invite investors. Hays says that they will monetize new products over time, but ease of use will stay a focus for the business.

“I think that being funny and entertaining is great, but in the long term, we think the most important [thing] is building the best products and software for founders period. And to do that we need a brand that’s going to resonate more broadly and outside of our bubble,” the founder said.