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Student labor marketplace Pangea closes $2M seed round

by Alex Wilhelm

Pangea, a Providence, Rhode Island-based startup that connects youthful talent and businesses in need of freelance labor, announced this morning that it has closed an oversubscribed $2 million seed round.

Pangea CEO and co-founder Adam Alpert told TechCrunch that his company had set out to secure $1.5 million, but wound up raising more. We’re hearing that somewhat often these days.

IDEA Fund Partners’ Lister Delgado led the round. Other investors in the transaction included Unpopular Ventures, Brown Angel Group, PJC and a number of individuals.

The startup graduated from Y Combinator earlier in the year, raising a check from the accelerator and another $350,000 since it closed a $400,000 pre-seed round last April. All told, Pangea has raised around $3 million.

The startup runs a marketplace that links college-age talent to companies in need of their services. Given the skillset of many college students, social media and web developer work are popular on the Pangea platform.

The model is scaling. Per Alpert and his co-founder John Tambunting, gross merchandise volume (GMV), or the value of sold services on Pangea’s market, rose 400% on a year-over-year basis in Q2 2021. And the CEO disclosed earlier in July that the company’s GMV rose 40% in the preceding four weeks.

For context, TechCrunch reported that Pangea was “facilitating $50,000 in transactions between college freelancers and businesses” in March 2021. That figure should now be heading toward the $100,000 monthly GMV run-rate threshold. We’ll annoy the company for new growth (Read more...)

YC-backed Pangea discusses growth, fundraising ahead of demo day

by Alex Wilhelm

Pangea, a marketplace startup that wants to connect college freelancers and companies in need of digital help, is seeing its growth rate accelerate as it races toward the impending Y Combinator demo day.

It’s traditional around this time that startups in the accelerator reach out to say hello. Provided that they are willing to chat growth metrics, we’re willing to listen.

Pangea, based in Providence, Rhode Island, is one such company. TechCrunch previously covered the company when it announced a $400,000 pre-seed round last April. Now most of the way through the YC accelerator, the company dished regarding its recent growth and the fact that it added more capital to its accounts late last year.

The Pangea team, from their shared house/office. Via the company.

On the growth side of the coin, Pangea CEO Adam Alpert told TechCrunch the company has grown its gross merchandise volume (GMV) sequentially by 35% in each of the last two months. That’s a steep pace of GMV expansion. And the growth is adding up to real numbers, with Pangea facilitating $50,000 in transactions between college freelancers and businesses in the last four weeks.

Alpert said that its year-ago number was around $3,000 or $4,000.

And the company has managed to expand its market take rate to around 25%, tinkering with how it charges for its service. The result is a model that might resonate with anyone familiar with Fiverr, and may help the company more rapidly expand its net revenue.

The (Read more...)