We are delighted to announce that we have successfully closed a seed round of funding this summer just over €500k. The round was led by Fuel Ventures and backed by Enterprise Ireland and a number of private investors.
This round of investment comes at the perfect time for the business. Thanks to the support of the amazing community surrounding HiiKER, we have made huge leaps in building the best possible tool for hikers around the world. This financial support enables us to continue to strive for the vision we have for this business.
Community
Since the very early days of HiiKER (even way back when Paul was developing the “Waymarked Trails” app) community has been at the centre of what we choose to build. We always had the customer in mind. Those first 10/20/100 users, helped us imagine all that a hiker would need from a mobile app. And to this day, with over 380,000 users worldwide, that relationship with our customers and users is stronger than ever. As well as building a product for our core users, we’re building channels to ensure that we can hear feedback from as many users as possible.
Growth
Growth is the goal of pretty much every company. And while the growth of the community is very important to us, so is our own growth as people. While taking this journey, we have met and worked with so many people along the way. Speaking to them, we have learned so much about why we are doing this. This personal growth gives us perspective on what we want to achieve.
Our Mission was always plain and simple – Get more people outdoors. The way we needed to do this was to build a tool that enables all kinds of people to feel confident while getting outdoors. We want to use our own personal growth to break down these barriers that restrict some people from getting out and exploring.
So this funding is not just about us building an app. This is about growing this community and ensuring everyone can access the outdoors with confidence.
What’s next?
We are really excited to dive into lots of development projects on the platforms. We have lots of cool product features and updates to launch over the coming months.
We are also working on some really awesome partnerships with more trail organisations and outdoor brands.
We are also looking at other ways to engage with our community. Over the summer months, we hope to arrange more events to meet up and do what we all share in common… Hiking.
