Web3 Startup Here Not There Labs Closes $25.5 Million Series A Funding Round Led by a16z

Web3 startup Here Not There Labs closed a $25.5 million Series A round led by a16z with participation from Benchmark and Framework Ventures. The funds raised will be used to build Towns, a Web3 social protocol.

Towns offers an end-to-end encrypted chat protocol that lets communities create programmable, self-governed “town squares”. Communities can control settings like administration, privacy and roles, and create tailored experiences that can include rewarding member participation or allowing members to sell NFT in the chat. Any community can build new clients or APIs on the protocol for control and customization.

Here Not There Labs was founded by Ben Rubin, co-founder of group video chat app Houseparty and livestreaming app Meerkat, and Brian Meek, former CTO of virtual reality training company STRIVR Labs and former general manager of engineering at Skype. Here Not There Labs plans to decentralize the Towns network and transfer governance and control to the Towns DAO.