I am happy to share that Planaria corp has closed its seed round investment of $1.65MM from Ausvic Capital, Calvin Ayre, John Coyle, Ken Shishido, Mempool, Persimmon Hill Limited, and Unbounded Capital (In alphabetical order).

My goal from the beginning was to get a diverse yet focused group of investors involved. And I think I’ve successfully managed to find a great group.

The round was carried out as a mass syndication. Mass syndication is the opposite approach to traditional VC fundraising. Instead of a lead investor leading by writing a term sheet and the founder agreeing to the terms after negotiation, in a mass syndication round it is the founder who comes up with the term sheet first (through the lawyer of course) and then broadcasts it to a set of investors, to which each can subscribe or pass.

While raising a round this way can potentially give more power to the founder, this can be very risky and requires a lot of work and juggling, and also can be a disaster if not done right. So I had to spend more time than I expected in order to make sure I didn’t mess up things.

Fortunately the effort was worth it, and the round became oversubscribed. I ended up raising more money than my original goal.

I would like to thank all investors for believing in the vision. With the funds in place, I will now start to actively build out the company and get things done. Stay tuned.