Alpacr, an innovative social network for travel and adventure lovers, has just closed a £160,000 seed investment round. To date the company has raised over £322,000, and is now set to disrupt the social networking world.

Based in Cardiff, Alpacr was founded by Dan Swygart (24), shortly after he graduated in Economics from Cardiff University in 2017. With Dan being named in the Top 10 entrepreneurs under 25 (UK), and having a world class team of software developers and advisors, Alpacr is set to scale exponentially in 2020.

Notably Alpacr’s non-executive director is Tyler Droll, the former CEO of YikYak, a social networking app worth $400m after one year and which raised $74m in funding.

With the rise in the next generation of social media, such as Twitch and TikTok, the social networks of the future concentrate on niche interests. Alpacr aims to dominate the global social media market for travel and adventure.

Alpacr has had a busy few years. After launching across Europe and South East Asia, with large marketing events across Barcelona, Bali, Thailand, Alpacr got interest from a large foreign investor, committing £250k.

After working closely with UK Government, foreign governments, and lawyers, the investment deal unfortunately fell through, with the investor failing to deliver at the last minute. This was after over six months of paperwork and commitment. It meant that Dan, now massively in debt, had to take out a credit card and jump on a flight to get to Silicon Valley, the one place he knew he could bring the Alpacr dream alive.

Within the first week he was standing with a sign in the centre of Silicon Valley announcing he was raising investment. This was about 10 minutes from the head offices of Google, Facebook, Apple and others. The sign began to grab a lot of attention, and soon afterwards Dan was having coffee with one of the people who set up Apple with Steve Jobs, and pitching to some of the biggest angel investor groups in the world.

Alpacr was able to raise finance from investors from all over the world and closed fully this week, despite the global health and economic crisis caused by Covid-19.

Alpacr was recently named the ‘Leading Travel Blogging Platform 2020’ by SME news. Moving forward, Alpacr is bringing out software updates, and launching its largest global marketing campaign. It is also setting up a satellite office in Silicon Valley, where the management team will be based.