YC-backed Better Opinions, a trading platform that allows users to trade their opinions and earn real money, has raised $2.5 million in a seed funding round led by Metaplanet VC and Goldwater Capital.
The round also saw participation from YCombinator, Taurus VC, Original Capital, Tremis Capital, Super Capital, and other investors, including angel investors. Previously, Better Opinions had raised $700,000 in a pre-seed round from investors including Soma Capital and Java Capital.
Better Opinions is an app that operates in the realm of the prediction market and allows users to trade their opinions with real money on events in various categories such as cricket, cryptocurrency, politics, and entertainment. Prediction markets are a relatively new asset class where users can trade on future unknown events and earn money.
Since its launch, The startup says it has expanded from continuous double auction trades, where users can trade on yes/no outcomes, to polls, where users can choose from multiple options to trade.
Soumyajit Das and Samay Jain co-founded the startup in 2021. It plans to add a social layer on to trading, to make trading more accessible, fun, and educational. Within a span of 6 months, Better Opinions has had over 600,000 users and has covered over 14,000 events, it said.
With this round of funding, The Gurugram-based startup will focus on building and expanding the product and technology team, towards marketing and user growth. “Some of our investors’ portfolio companies include The Boring Company, TikTok, Reddit and Binance. It’s heartwarming to see such investors having faith and belief in our product and team. The funding will also help with our tech and infrastructure scale-up plans,” said Soumyajit Das, Co-founder CTO of Better Opinions.
According to Samay Jain, The raised capital will also be used to make Better Opinions a trading cum social platform. “We have so far seen an excited user base, who are eager to trade and invest in our platform, and their demand for more events and categories is a testament to the potential of our product,” Samay said.
“Our vision from here is therefore not only to create a stock market of opinions and make trading accessible to all, but to build a social platform where our users can trade and engage,” Samay adds.
Speaking on the investment, Rauno Miljand, Managing Partner of Metaplanet, said, “Better Opinions developed and operated real cash prediction market is contributing greatly to increasing critical and accountable decision-making abilities and financial literacy of their user base. It is rare to see ventures having a positive impact on epistemic hygiene while also appealing to the mass market – Better Opinion is one of few.”
Notably, Better Opinions was also part of the W22 batch of YCombinator.
Source @Indianstartupnews
