Leawood-based Blooom raised $9.15 million in Series B financing, giving it the resources necessary to boost its marketing to reach more of its target audience of middle-class workers and grow even faster.
The company announced Monday that it nearly doubled its assets under management in the past six months alone, reaching $500 million. But it needs to form more relationships with large employers to really hit its stride and gain a commanding foothold in the marketplace.
Originally started with money from the three founders’ pockets, Blooom then won a $50,000 Launch KC grant during Techweek Kansas City in 2015. Later that year, the company raised $4 million from investors, which was used to develop a software platform to help employees pick the best 410(k) offered by their employer at the lowest price that fits their time until retirement. The company won an additional $10,000 grant after being named as the winner of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation’s “One in a Million” contest, which gave the company more visibility and credibility to hire people and land some clients.
The company’s second-round fundraising of $9.15 million came from investors, including:
- QED
- Commerce Ventures
- Allianz Life Ventures
- Nationwide Venture
- TTV Capital
- Industry Ventures
- UMB Bank
- KC Rise Fund
“Early in Blooom’s funding round, KCRise Fund and Blooom saw in each other the combined value we bring to KC,” Darcy Howe, managing director of the KC Rise Fund, said in a release. “Supporting a high-growth company which wants to stay in KC with both capital and network connections to help them grow is a win for KCRise Fund investors and for our community.”
Blooom CEO Chris Costello told the Kansas City Business Journal that the $9.15 million gives the company plenty of time to prove that it has a business model that can grow.
“Looking forward to this year, we’re trying to get to a point where at the end of the year we’ll have 50,000 clients,” Costello said. “We think a good healthy number of those clients will come from rolling out Blooom as a benefit to large local employers.”
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