Fishbowl, a social network upstart that has hundreds of thousands professionals chatting daily about their work lives, has today announced $5.3 million in Series A financing. This brings its total funding raised to $7.5M. This round was led by GGV Capital with Alex Zhu, Head of TikTok, also participating in the round. Hans Tung, managing partner, GGV Capital, joined the board of directors.

Fishbowl is tackling existing professional networking platforms like LinkedIn head-on, which prioritize building a rolodex of connections over creating conversations between users. Fishbowl empowers professionals to congregate online across industries, and to have candid and open conversations with others in their field and company. CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, widely recognized industry thought leaders, and junior analysts are all frequent users of Fishbowl.

Fishbowl has seen tremendous adoption in the advertising, consulting, and accounting industries, to which it rolled out exclusively. Within these industries, Fishbowl has become a place for young professionals to engage C-Suite leaders on topics important to them, and for marginalized groups to congregate and support one another.

Following its Series A round, Fishbowl will utilize funding to expand its reach across industries, with plans to open up to professionals in the law, entertainment, healthcare, and tech verticals. Fishbowl will be launching to professionals working in law in January of 2020. Most recently, Fishbowl launched to the education community, creating a channel specific to kindergarten through grade 12 teachers and educators in the U.S.

On competitors in the space, Fishbowl's CEO & Co-founder Matt Sunbulli says, "Current professional networks lack a space where users can share moments and candid thoughts from their work lives in the same way they do with their personal lives. We want to change how professionals converse with one another within companies and industries to create community and transparency that leads to positive change."

"As digital natives, Millennials and Gen-Z want to build more meaningful relationships and share all aspects of their lives in the workplace. The team at Fishbowl is taking professional social networks beyond old school rolodex to build relevance and community in a single product," said Hans Tung, GGV Capital Partner.

Fishbowl started with the mission of providing a platform for authentic conversations among professionals after the founders experienced the siloed culture and impact of big corporations. To date, Fishbowl has captured significant percentages of employees at brand name companies across industries, spanning all ranges of seniority. More than 75% of US professionals at Boston Consulting Group, and 40% of US professionals at the Advertising holding company, Publicis, for example, are registered on the platform. Users spend on average 15 minutes a day on the mobile app.

Fishbowl is currently accessible through its mobile app available on iOS and Android devices and is free for all users. Visit fishbowlapp.com for more information and to join the community.