Propose an edit: Paul Erlanger

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Title Category One sentence summary Infobox, one "key: value" per line Article body, markdown, use [[wiki links]] and end with a ## References section

Paul Erlanger is a co founder of [[fomo]], the consumer crypto trading app that became one of the best funded attempts to package the experience of [[the trenches]] for a mainstream audience. He founded the company in 2025 with Se Yong Park, known in crypto as [[seyong]], and Prashan Dharmesena. The three worked together at the decentralized exchange dYdX and each began their careers at Deutsche Bank, an unusually traditional pedigree for a meme coin adjacent product.

## fomo

fomo launched in May 2025 as a mobile first app that gives users a single balance across four chains, gasless swaps, Apple Pay deposits, and a social feed showing what real traders are doing alongside [[copy trading]] tools. The design bet is that the next wave of on chain traders will never use a terminal, a Telegram bot or a bridge, and that social context, seeing friends and known traders move, matters more than charts. That thesis put fomo in direct competition with [[axiom]], [[gmgn]] and the incumbent bots for the retail flow that launchpads like [[pump fun]] generate.

## Fundraising

The company's fundraising became a story in itself. Instead of a conventional seed round, the founders drew up a list of 200 people they wanted as angels and pitched them individually; 140 wrote checks. In November 2025 fomo announced a $17 million Series A led by Benchmark, one of the storied venture firm's rare crypto investments, bringing total funding to $19 million. TechCrunch framed the deal as Benchmark betting on consumer crypto at the exact moment decentralized exchange volume was reshaping retail trading. In June 2026 the company raised a $75 million Series B at a $550 million valuation led by Index Ventures and Union Square Ventures, covered by Fortune, making fomo one of the most valuable consumer facing companies to emerge from the meme coin era.

## Significance

Erlanger and his co founders represent a second generation of trench builders: rather than launching a casino, they are building the brokerage layer on top of it, with blue chip venture money behind them. Whether a polished app can capture flow from the degens who live in terminals remains the open question of fomo's story.

## References

- https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/06/why-benchmark-made-a-rare-crypto-bet-on-trading-app-fomo-with-17m-series-a/
- https://fortune.com/2026/06/22/fomo-series-b-fundraise-index-ventures-union-square-ventures/
- https://fintech.global/2026/06/23/fomo-raises-75m-series-b-to-scale-on-chain-trading-app/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fomo_(platform)
- https://traded.co/vc/deal/fomo-secures-17-million-series-a-led-by-benchmark-with-support-from-140-angel-investors/

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