Dosh, an Austin-based startup disrupting the advertising industry, on Tuesday announced it has closed on a $40 million round of funding.
The funding includes $20 million in equity and $20 million in venture debt. Goodwater C
To date, Dosh has raised $96 million including $44 million in a Series A round in 2018 with PayPal and Goodwater Capital as lead investors. Other investors include Next Coast Ventures, Chetrit Ventures and Extol Capital.
Dosh is disrupting the $231 billion advertising industry by going directly to consumers and giving them cash back on purchases linked to their credit card. It gives advertisers a new way to reach and reward consumers through its cash-back app.
“Consumers are tired of having their data used and sold to drive advertising revenues for companies. Dosh moves advertising spend directly into consumers’ wallets,” Ryan Wuerch, founder and CEO at Dosh, said in a news release. “We are empowering consumers for the first time to benefit from their own data, while bringing merchants new customers and greater revenues.”
Dosh, which is slang for cash, is available via the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. To activate the app, a consumer inputs credit cards into the Dosh app and then they receive cash back for purchases made using those cards. The Dosh technology finds coupons and deals from the brand or merchant and automatically applies them to the consumer’s purchase. The app also has a feature called discovery that has special offers.
In the past year, Dosh has seen dramatic growth of its business. It has given consumers more than $50 million in cash rewards. The company plans to use the latest funds raised to accelerate product development and to hire key employees.
“Dosh’s mission is to put billions of dollars of wasted advertising spend directly into consumers’ pockets,” Chi-Hua Chien, co-founder and managing partner at Goodwater Capital, said in a news release. “They are the clear leader in the rapidly growing card-linked offers market, and we are confident this latest round of funding will accelerate their achievement of that mission.”
On Silicon Hills News’ Ideas to Invoices podcast last year, Wuerch said he was going to build Dosh into a billion-dollar company. That story was also one of the most popular stories on Silicon Hills News last year. And Dosh also made Silicon Hills News’ list of 25 Hot Startups to Watch in 2019.
