Fruitful emerges from stealth with $33m

Fruitful, a startup that aims to encourage healthy financial habits for its users, has raised $33m in equity funding from a seed and Series A round.

According to TechCrunch, Emigrant Bank led the company’s $8m seed round while 8VC led its $25m Series A. Neither financing was previously announced. The company also raised $4 m in a convertible note, which represented an oversubscription of the Series A.

Other contributors include Lux Capital, Founders Fund, Elad Gil, Hero Health founder and CEO Kal Vepuri, along with founders of Brex, Gemini, Tagomi and others.

When it launches later this year, Fruitful will provide members with a certified financial planner — many of whom have worked as a “guide” in the financial industry for companies such as Fidelity. The role of that guide is to give a member ongoing personalised advice for $98 a month on a variety of financial matters, from budgeting to establishing savings and investments to 401(k)s, buying a home, putting away funds for kids’ college and paying taxes.

The app is currently in a live beta.

According to Josh McManus, co-founder and CEO of Fruitful, the subscription model of the company is a core differentiator. It doesn’t charge passive management fees or sell third-party products or services.

“We feel like there is a large number of people trapped in what I describe as the messy middle, which is folks who are making a high income, but have not yet built up a nest egg or net worth that’s high enough to warrant private client banking,” he said. “We also have a lot of concerns about some of the traditional financial guidance because a lot of it is associated with a product or service.”

He added that a subscription model offers people a “low to no bias” form of financial guidance.

In a post on the company’s LinkedIn, Fruitful said, “This is an important milestone in our mission to make expert financial guidance more accessible to Americans.”

More FinTech are emerging that are looking to provide financial wellness solutions. Birmingham-based FinTech firm Immediate recently raised $15.5m in a fresh capital raise to help more employees overcome the challenges and burdens of financial stress through elective access to earned pay.

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