Smartphone App STAND Raises $2.25M During Seed Funding Round; Names Twitter’s Co-Founder Biz Stone as Chairman of the Board

On Thursday, photo-friendly smartphone app, STAND,  announced it has raised $2.25 million seed funding round, which was led by Resolute Ventures, with participation from Silicon Valley influencers including Jack Dorsey, Twitter/Square; Greylock Discovery (Josh Elman); Fresco Capital (Tytus Michalski and Stephen Forte); Meng Tan, Google; Doug Bowman, former Creative Director at Twitter; Avi Hager, The Regah Group, and Bob Lee, former CTO at Square. Additional angels include Roma Khanna, MGM, Kevin Eyres, LinkedIn, and Debby Hopkins, CITI Ventures.

STAND was founded in 2014 by Eric Harr and Tony Daniel, previously founders of the successful grassroots social movement, Make A Stand, which was inspired by Harr’s  then eight-year old daughter, Vivienne, and raised $100,000 to end child slavery. Her cause sparked an important lesson: you don’t have to be big or powerful to change the world, you just need to stand with others for what you believe in. From there, and thanks to the support and passion of key figures like Biz, STAND was born.  The team behind STAND believes there is tremendous empathy in the world, and they have designed a new product to channel that empathy to create global impact.

Harr shared:

“We start with a simple premise: people are good. Individuals give over $200 billion every year, and 95% of families contribute to charity. But the space is fragmented and inefficient. That vast majority of donations come through traditional sources like paper checks. We’re going to change that by removing friction all over this space. We’re out to crack the code on empathy on a global scale. We’re more than a tech company. We’re a passion-driven team building a purpose-driven technology.”

“STAND didn’t start as a product. It started as a promise that one person can change the world and a business wrapped around that. We saw the magnitude of change that one person created, and we believe that there are millions out there who want to change the world for the better. They just need the right platform. There is no better time in history to answer that need, and STAND is the technology to connect people to each other and causes they care about to create massive, enduring impact in the world.”

STAND also announced that co-founder of Twitter, Biz Stone, has joined its company as a chairman. He shared:

“STAND delivers on the true promise of a connected world—people helping each other. It removes the friction between empathy an action and connects us with people we care about around the causes we love. Everyone needs a chance to be heard, to matter, and to make a positive impact in the world. STAND will be one of the most important apps we’ve seen in a long time.”