WeFish, in collaboration with the prestigious Startupxplore accelerator, managed to close their financing round of 150,000 euros in just one week. Thanks to the early success of their campaign, the startup exceeded its own expectations and reached 125% of the initial budget, the maximum amount available in a round of this kind of financing.
With this great boost, WeFish intends to invest in Machine Learning, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence technologies that will improve the product, seeking to make a leap into differentiating themselves in the market. Also, financing their marketing efforts to expand the recreational fishing focused project worldwide, starting with the US market. With this round of funding, WeFish’s foray into the US, added to its presence in Latin American countries, aims to achieve its main objective for the year: reaching one million users and present its brand as a leader in the sector.
Alberto Manuel López, CEO of WeFish assures that “the success of the investment round has been overwhelming. We no longer speak only in terms of financial support (always necessary), but it has allowed for incredible visibility of our brand, adding to the project more than 100 investors. In other words, more than 100 micro-ambassadors who are willing to support WeFish’s growth through contacts and expertise – nothing says “smart money” better than this.” He adds that “other startups in the Murcia ecosystem, agents in the Recreational Fishing sector, national and international business angels, including key players in Glovo and Nestlé, have become part of the team.”
This investment round demonstrates the confidence of companies and experts in the scalability of the WeFish project. All of this, after being the winner in the latest edition of the Venture On the Road competition, by the SeedRocket accelerator and being a finalist in the Entrepreneur XXI Awards, promoted by CaixaBank.
The ambition of this project is justified by the numbers of the fishing sector around the world: in the United States alone there are more than 49 million fishermen with a market share of 135 billion dollars, which makes it a sector with enormous possibilities and one where an optimal solution that fits the needs of the users, has not yet existed. This is how WeFish, with its mobile application, provides a comprehensive response to the recreational fishing cycle (planning, purchase of equipment, catch record keeping), providing a space to share experiences, encouraging the social component of this activity.
BUSINESS MODEL
WeFish is a mobile app dedicated to recreational fishing. One of the main functions of the app is that users can record their catches, thus creating a personal “logbook”, in which they can see all the meteorological information of each of their catches and share their experience with a community of fishermen. They can also plan their fishing trips, thanks to the relevant meteorological information needed for this activity (moon phase, tide, temperature, wave height, atmospheric pressure, wind, etc.).
Thanks to the in-app Marketplace, users can buy and sell specific fishing gear. The platform, which includes a large gamification component, has achieved in its short life span more than 170,000 downloads and 70,000 users have rated the app with a 4.8 out of 5, both on Android and iOS platforms.