3 Questions for FunderNation
Our Interviewpartner: Uli W. Fricke, CEO of FunderNation GmbH
What was the motivation for the relaunch of the platform and what changes have resulted?
FunderNation was founded in 2014 and has constantly developed and improved since then. Our offer goes far beyond pure crowdinvesting: FunderNation is the platform for digital financing of start-ups with over 25 years of experience in venture capital and early-stage financing, extensive know-how and a strong network. From now on, we are putting these qualities at the heart of our positioning and giving both companies and investors the opportunity to benefit from them even more. That is why we have decided to expand and update our offering. In line with our revised offer, we have also dedicated ourselves to the website, improved our user interface and developed a new look. One of the most important new features is the revision of our Investment Profiles and Investment Sweetspots. Click here for our latest blog post, in which we explain the Investment Profiles in detail. However, our development is not yet complete: Over the coming months, we are planning further improvements and enhancements, such as an overhaul of the investor section.
However, our development is not yet complete: Over the coming months, we plan to make further improvements and enhancements, such as an overhaul of the investor section.
How did you approach the new offer and look, was there a collaboration with an agency or did you develop it internally with your team?
We think that no one is as close to our users as we are. No agency knows our investors and companies and their needs as well as we do. That’s why we decided to take the improvements based on our collected user feedback completely into our own hands. We developed and implemented all the changes ourselves as a team.
External communication is increasingly more about digitalisation and impact and less about “small investors” – is this noticeable among your customers that they want to finance more and more larger projects and are therefore also addressed to other investor groups?
Our financing model is so attractive because we take into account that young companies often need a combination of different financing alternatives. It is not only important for us not to put any obstacles in the way of follow-up financing. We actively support a broad financing mix with our business angel co-investing model. This means that at FunderNation, all investors can invest equally professionally in companies: We address both private investors with investments starting at EUR 100 and business angels with larger investment contributions. This has not changed.
Over the last few years, however, it has become clear that our investors are increasingly interested in projects in the areas of sustainability and digitalisation & IT. Therefore, these two categories are among our most important investment sweet spots. This is also reflected in our offering: we currently offer four sustainable investment opportunities and two with the digitalisation & IT sweet spot.
In 2021, we successfully financed the green tech company EnerKíte: One of our most successful financings with over EUR 1,000,000 total investment. And our Sustainability Action Month in October 2021, in which we planted one tree for every EUR 250 invested in a company from the sustainability category, also met with a positive response from our users.
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