Crowdfunding success stories: Fantoo

Although it hadn’t even launched, intelligent email solution Fantoo managed to secure a notable £450,000 seed round on Crowdcube last November, with its biggest backer pledging £140,000 and its smallest just £10.

Founded in 2012, London-based Fantoo has created a ‘smart’ email management system which is designed to automatically categorise a person’s emails and “learn the owner’s email habits”; giving an estimated reading time and linking emails to recognisable images.

With there being “a lot of excitement about Fantoo” as explained by Crowdcube co-founder Luke Lang, the email company’s promise to “take the stress out of managing messages” saw it win the support of 78 investors over a 40 day period.

Having already picked up several innovation awards for its idea and recently awarded as Dell’s first ‘Start-up in Residence’, the company is using the funds to gear up for the imminent launch of its corporate email service in the UK.

Fantoo co-founder and CEO, Jordan Fantaay explained the need for his “revolutionary” email system:

“Email is a commodity like water which flows around the world, but it has outgrown the inbox and outbox system.

“Fantoo will help people improve their performance by not emailing colleagues who are busy for instance and guiding people to emails which are important and need responding to.

“The system also allows employees to compare their performance against other colleagues anonymously, which is useful for the many thousands of people who now work remotely, and for employers to collect data on the performance of their offices.”