It was the transition from in-person classes to online learning during the Covid-19 pandemic that fundamentally changed Koop CEO and co-founder Natalia Murillo’s life. At the time, Murillo was a sophomore attending the University of Southern California to pursue a degree in neuroscience. After struggling with adapting to an online environment, she dropped out.
“During Covid, the quality of education was just not the same online and I became deeply involved in the crypto world,” Murillo told Built In via email. “I was having the most fun I’d ever had on the internet through buying NFTs with my friends. It came to a point where I couldn’t focus on school and was spending all of my time working on crypto projects, doing research, buying NFTs and getting involved in the Web3 world.”
At first, Murillo grappled with quitting school to dive into Web3 work full-time.
“As a first-generation college student from an Argentinian immigrant family, it was a difficult decision,” Murillo said. “I didn’t come from money or a large network.”
After gaining experience working at Web3-centric companies like Juicebox, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) platform built for crowdfunding Web3-focused businesses and communities, Murillo decided to create NYC-based Koop to tackle the problems she experienced at other DAOs and on social media platforms.
Koop, a platform that allows creators and their fans to generate wealth together, officially launched on Wednesday after operating in beta mode for two months. The startup also announced it raised $5 million in a seed funding round.
In its short beta stint, the platform gathered $850 million in membership volume and a waitlist of 8,500 users, according to a company statement.
On Koop, creators and NFT collectors can organize and fundraise for projects through NFT art or collector passes that provide decentralized ownership of projects. According to the statement, Koop can serve as a venture studio backing Web3 projects and media arms for creators to monetize their fandoms.
“In a traditional Web 2.0 world with a binary incentive model — likes [and] follows — there is no way for fans to productively engage with a creator,” Murillo said. “[Through] Koop’s model, creators and their fans become co-founders working together toward a common goal and generating wealth together.”
Koop says the recently raised seed funding round will be used to build out its team and hire engineers.
