Bounce Raises $12m Series A Led By Andreessen Horowitz
I’m excited to share that Bounce has raised a $12m Series A round led by Andrew Chen at Andreessen Horowitz.
Just 2 years ago, in the depths of the pandemic, Bounce lost all its revenue, my cofounder quit, and investors even asked me if it was worth it to keep going.
The vision for Bounce has always been massive and that’s what kept our excitement up no matter what came our way. Bounce aims to build, on one side, the largest network of retail locations offering various services in the extra space of local shops, and on the other side, “cloud storage for the physical world” - this idea that as a consumer, you can easily deposit and access your things wherever you are.
The idea first came to me when I was joining some colleagues for a happy hour after work one evening in San Francisco and someone said they’d join but first go all the way home just to drop off their work bag so they wouldn’t have to carry it with them all night. That was the lightbulb moment for me – people spend so much time planning their days around their things. This seems silly and completely overlooked. I’ve been a minimalist (owning just a couple suitcases of things) since I can remember and always valued being able to “do what I wanted” without my things dragging me down. This has enabled me to relocate for work more than a dozen times, travel extensively (60+ countries) without much planning, and do things on a whim. On the small business front, I spent the beginning of my career working as a Product Manager at Intuit building software that helps small business owners run their businesses more efficiently. I enjoyed meeting local business owners from all walks of life and understanding what drives them. The combination of working on “freedom from your things” and small business empowerment makes me feel that Bounce is a true calling for me.
Our core product, Luggage Storage in Local Shops, has scaled to more than 7,000 locations across 40 countries. Every day, thousands of people now count on Bounce for a secure and convenient location to drop off bags and go about the day. Customers often discover us on a whim, are surprised that such a service even existed, and now will use us in different cities all over the world from New York to London to Paris.
We launched our second vertical last year: Package Acceptance in Local Shops. We have since scaled this offering to 2,000 locations with a focus on local subscription customers in big cities like New York.
Behind Bounce is our incredible network of local businesses that serve our customers. Without them, we’d be nothing. Our diverse network includes everything from boutique hotels to shipping stores to artisanal bakeries and just about every type of retail store in between. When the pandemic hit and local businesses were so severely affected, we became even more inspired in our mission to bring more foot traffic and revenue into their doors.
I’m excited to share that we put $1 million into the pockets of small businesses during the pandemic just by continuing to build Bounce. Our business model helps local business communities thrive. Some stores told us that without Bounce, they would have gone out of existence. We are incredibly humbled and motivated by this.
We’re not stopping there. Last week, we launched our BounceBack Program where we are committing $3 million into the pockets of small businesses between now and the end of summer. Local businesses can use a kickstart now more than ever and we’re excited to offer even more income security to our partners. Know anyone with an urban retail store? Invite them to join Bounce and see what they can earn.
Lastly, nothing would be possible without our amazing team of Bouncians (employees). Most of the team joined in the depths of the pandemic when their friends thought they were crazy for making such a bet on this weather-battered company. We all shared a belief of what could be, and what was on the other side of the pandemic. I’m so glad it’s paid off – the team has ridden a startup roller coaster like few others: going from zero to millions of annual users in 1 year and 38x revenue growth in 2021. We had to reinvent the company every quarter to keep up with the change. I wouldn’t be able to come up with the words here to describe what it was like.
We’re hiring! The off-the-rails growth continues. I truly believe this is a once in a career opportunity to experience this magnitude of growth. We expect to make 30+ new hires this year across Engineering, Sales, Growth, and Operations. We are soon moving into a beautiful 3-story office in Lisbon, Portugal where we employ both Europeans and Americans and we also hire remotely all across the US and Europe (we have employees from 10 countries). Check out the roles we're hiring for and please get in touch if this excites you!