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Lex Gets New CEO, Ex-Hinge CPO, and $5 Million Investment

Queer social app Lex has announced a leadership mix-up after successfully raising $5.6 million in seed funding. Jennifer Lewis has been promoted from COO to CEO, while ex-Hinge CPO Michelle Parsons has joined to lead the platform’s product team. 

Kel Rakowski, the founder and former-CEO of the platform, will be moving to a new role as Chief Creative Officer, TechCrunch reports.

The company shared that Stellation Capital’s Peter Boyce led its seed round, with other investors including, Slauson & Co., Hope Lab Ventures, Best Nights VC, Great Oaks, Graph Ventures, Manuela Rios, and Melanie and Lila Steinbach.

A number of organisations that have already invested also upped their contribution including: Female Founders Fund, Alpaca Ventures, Red Swan and Gaingels.

“We’re proud to have successfully raised,” Lewis shared. She highlighted that it was an impressive achievement for Lex’s small team and that traditionally it’s difficult for women- and queer-led startups to get support from the venture capital industry.

Lex was originally inspired by lesbian personal ads, supporting text-based posts that were often focused on romance & intimacy. GDI reported in February that the platform was moving away from its raunchy past, now looking to focus more on community-building, as opposed to hookups. 

While this was a controversial move at the time, Lewis believes that the shift achieved its goal of delivering “a social app for all things queer.”

With this new investment, Lex is set to grow. However, its new leadership highlighted that monetisation would have to be done in a way that is representative to the community it serves. Lewis pointed out that ad-based monetisation requires the platform to keep users scrolling on the app, as opposed to meeting up in real life.

Therefore the platform is exploring alternate methods of revenue generation, including setting a post limit for users that can be turned off in exchange for a small fee.

You can find out more about Lex on its website here.

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