Token Positions for the Future with a Series A Raise. Onwards!
Famed futurist and inventor, Arthur C. Clarke, once wrote that: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Sir Clarke’s words have inspired our entire team at Token to create a magical experience that allows you to move through the world more easily and securely.
A Quick Recap On Who and What We Are
At the heart of it, Token is the key to your life — starting with a ring that is beautifully and intelligently designed to allow you to access everything — across digital and physical touch points — so you can live keyless, cardless and free of passwords.
As a team, we are focused on making smart, elevated lifestyle accessories that give you complete control over your identity in a world where that is becoming harder (yet more critical) to do everyday. To do this, we are laser-focused on design, convenience and security.
Our New Funding
To help us bring this ambitious vision to reality, we’ve raised a $5M Series A investment, bringing our total funding to $7M. This fundraise gives us the runway and support to ramp up our efforts to bring Token to market.
Participating in this round is (1) New York Ventures, NYS’s venture capital fund, (2) Blockchange Ventures led by Ken Seiff, (3) the VC fund of Neo, a newly-formed community for awesome engineers founded by Ali Partovi, as well as continued participation from many of our original seed investors, including Jalak Jobanputra from Future\Perfect Ventures, who led our Seed round and sits on our Board of Directors. Additionally, CEO and Founder of Code.org, Hadi Partovi has joined Token as both an investor and advisor.
(1) New York Ventures is a crucial partner for Token as we continue to drive public and government support for digital IDs. Furthermore, we will continue to support local manufacturing in Rochester, New York where we are based with their support. At the core of our values, we believe in supporting and working with our community, and New York Ventures will help us do just that.
(2) Blockchange Ventures and Ken Seiff have been instrumental partners and mentors to us. Ken’s background as a retail and ecommerce industry pioneer continues to allow us to be thoughtful about the brand and customer experience we offer with Token. Ken was also original investor in Ethereum, and we’re grateful to have him on board.
(3) We’re thrilled to be working with the Neo team and both Ali and Hadi Partovi, because their experience in supporting some of the greatest growth and product stories of the last decade (Facebook, AirBnB, Uber, Dropbox) is unbelievably inspiring and exemplary. Furthermore, their own experience building great businesses, their work advising companies that have had major impact in the space of personal identity, as well as their philanthropic work with Code.org motivates us deeply and we look forward to working with them more closely.
Finally, Future\Perfect Ventures and Jalak Jobanputra have been a key supporter to us for the past 3 years. As founder of one of the first venture capital funds focused on decentralization and blockchain technology, Jalak has provided strategic guidance and introductions as we’ve scaled.
A Word from Our Investors
“The NYS Innovation Venture Capital Fund targets strategic industries that support advanced manufacturing endeavors statewide. Investing in companies like these supports the state’s innovation economy and provides support for further development of Token’s cutting-edge security products.”
- Empire State Development President, CEO & Commissioner Howard Zemsky“The idea that you can move around freely without passwords and keys and at the same time have higher levels of protection and control around your identity and location is literally one of the great promises that the blockchain offers. But this team didn’t stop there, they have built the first great consumer experience in the blockchain industry and are setting the bar for how we should experience and interact with the blockchain-just as Google, Facebook and Amazon did for the Internet.”
- Blockchange Ventures CEO, Ken Seiff“Neo invests in great people with audacious vision, and we found a perfect fit in Melanie and the Token team. Token’s rare blend of technical excellence, marketing instinct, and can-do culture is just what’s needed to make this ambitious product a success. I look forward to the day when I don’t need to remember a single password, key, or credit card.”
- CEO of Neo, Ali Partovi“Over the past few years as I’ve invested in the thesis of rapid decentralization, I was on the lookout for a company that represented what I call the “post smartphone” world. Token was that solution and we are pleased to continue to support the Company in its next phase of growth.”
- Future\Perfect Ventures General Partner, Jalak Jobanputra
Positioning for the Future — How We Will Use the Funding?
We will be using the money to continue our go-to-market efforts, specifically with key hires across our executive team and our hardware, software, platform, partnerships and marketing teams both in Rochester and New York City.
Most recently, we have welcomed Eric Mogil to our team. As Token CMO, Eric will oversee our go-to-market strategy and execution. He hails from the fashion world and Michael Kors, where he led their innovation efforts for six years and championed the launch of their smartwatch with Google and Fossil Group. Eric will be instrumental in the launch of the Token brand, products and platform worldwide. We are thrilled at the opportunity to continue to round out and scale up our world-class team so we can deliver a world-class product.
We could not have asked for better or more committed investors and advisors as we champion a platform of user-owned identity — enabling people to move about the world more freely while also better protecting information about who we are and what we are doing.
Our entire team is grateful, humbled and fired up to build on this incredible momentum as we march towards our roll-out later this year. From everyone here at Token, we look forward to delivering on the words of Arthur C. Clarke and making life a little bit more magical for everyone!
Now, back to work! ✨
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