- DeFi investment startup Pillow raised $3 million in Seed funding
- The company will use the funds to fuel global expansion, build its investment strategies, and grow its user base
- “We want to create a future where accessibility to decentralized finance is democratized,” said company founders
Pillow, a platform that invests in curated DeFi strategies, landed $3 million in funding this week in its first-ever investment round. The Seed round was led by Elevation Capital and a group of crypto angels. Pillow will use the funds to build out DeFi strategies, accelerate global expansion, build up its community of users, and grow the Pillow brand to reach a global audience.
Pillow was founded in 2021 to offer its users an accessible way to earn market-beating interest rates on a range of crypto holdings– including $USDC, $USDT, $BTC, and $ETH– without needing to be experts in the space. “We believe the next big unlock in Web 3.0 is going to come from significantly improving user experiences,” said Elevation Capital Principal Vaas Bhaskar. “Pillow fits right into that theme by abstracting away the complexities of DeFi – and hence making it more accessible.”
To remove the complexity, Pillow’s investment strategies are curated and actively managed. Additionally, the company offers 1-click investing with the potential of high yields and without transaction fees (known in the crypto world as gas fees) and underlying chains and tokens.
“We want to create a future where accessibility to decentralized finance is democratized, if not more than traditional finance. We’re fulfilling this vision by letting our users gain access to DeFi yield opportunities in a simple, safe, and secure manner,” said Pillow founders Arindam Roy, Rajath KM, and Kartik Mishra. “Our users have shown unequivocal faith in our platform in our private access program, and we’re on track to scale this to new heights. We’re grateful for the mentorship and guidance of Elevation Capital as we scale, along with some of the best builders in the Web 3.0 space … We’re elated to have the ecosystem rally behind us as we build our platform and community.”
Though decentralized finance seemed like a futuristic vision of the financial world in 2020, progress toward a decentralized world is quickly picking up steam. The total locked value in decentralized assets has gone from around $20 billion at the start of last year to around $250 billion this year. Additionally, last January, the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) gave the green light to allow banks to use stablecoins. And many countries have either launched, piloted, or are in the process of planning their own bank-issued digital currency (including the U.S. Federal Reserve, which issued a discussion paper on central bank digital currencies last week).
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