Shipitwise launches 2nd crowdfunding round

Logistics startup Shipitwise launched its second equity crowdfunding campaign on Friday, seeking to raise at least 100,000 euros before its planned A round in early 2017.

Shipitwise raised in July 176,200 euros – the largest equity crowdfunding campaign so far in Estonia. It was the first successful case on new Funderbeam marketplace for startup investments, which allows firms to raise capital from the crowd and then lets investors to trade in the companies – a unique platform in startup space.

First round investments in Shipitwise have been trading roughly twice their original value over the last weeks.

SHIPITWISE_ROUND2

This week Funderbeam raised $2.6 million from investors including Tim Draper, UK-based VC IQ Capital partners, and Thomson Reuters, and said it was opening the investment round to all other investors.

Shipitwise reached 50% of the target during the first day of the campaign.

“For the next 12 months, we plan on maintaining our month-over-month growth to at least 50% and reach a monthly revenue of 200,000 euros by the end of December to be ready to raise our A-round between January and March,” the firm said.

“As we want to do it with investors from the USA, we need to show remarkable presence or co-operation with some companies there. This is something we hadn’t planned before and thus need extra financing to get it done. Meanwhile, we’ve seen significant interest from Russia’s side to build logistics chains to connect them to Europe and the USA. There’s at least two major deals in process that also weren’t in the plan before,” it said.

Editor’s note: Updates to Day 1 results.