What’s the story behind Symphony, the ‘Slack for Wall Street’?

Symphony, a communications app that was developed for bankers and the people who message them, raised $165m at a $1.4B valuation.

The massive funding round came as a surprise to many people who believed the messaging market already had too many big competitors messaging over each other (Slack, Microsoft Teams, Facebook Workplace, etc.).

But the success of the platform, which was designed with particular tools for banking, shows that niche communications apps can survive in the era of Slack — as long as they’ve got something specific to say.

Unexpectedly sweet noise for Symphony

Symphony’s fat funding round came as a surprise even to Symphony CEO David Gurlé, who says he only planned to raise between $50m and $75m.

But Wall Street plays for keeps — and when bankers are happy, apparently they’re quick to start signing checks.

By creating tools for security and accounting efficiency that are particularly useful for their clients in banking, Symphony expanded from 200k users in 2017 to more than 425k today.