In today’s world, there is an abundance of resources being wasted at record rates. In the U.S. alone, 40% of food goes uneaten, with approximately $165 billion of food being wasted each year.
Freshdeal was formed to help address this problem and reduce waste. Their platform is a solution for produce buyers and suppliers to connect with trust, discover business opportunities, and trade safely.
How much is Freshdeal doing in MRR?
Freshdeal is a company built with a diversified pricing model. Overall, they have the capability to charge based on a monthly subscription to their platform, a percentage of transaction volume, affiliate relationships, and professional services.
While the platform is still pre-revenue, they have generated a small amount of money through one-off professional services, according to CEO Jose Baptista. Overall, Freshdeal is serving 6,000 active users and has facilitated $100M in trade volume thus far.
How much has Freshdeal raised?
Founded three years ago, Freshdeal bootstrapped their first year of operation before raising a $250k seed round. Covering the North American market, Freshdeal merged with Fruitspot, their European counterpart, in August of 2017.
Baptista noted that the companies split equity evenly between the two companies based on market size, upon merging. The new entity has recently downsized from 8 full-time employees to a lean 5-man team today.
What is the path forward for Freshdeal?
Going forward, Freshdeal is looking to raise $1.5M on a convertible note with a $10M pre-money valuation. Baptista explained that 20% of this round has been secured at this point in time and that he will be leading the fundraising efforts out of New York.
The company is planning to use this capital to begin the monetization process and have built out secure payment functionality to support a planned 5% transaction fee. Their team will look to invest the funds into additional engineering resources to support this important transition.