Invesdor raises €1M through its own service

By
arcticstartupstaff
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The licenced equity and debt crowdfunding platform Invesdor announces raising €1 million euro on a crowdfunding round through its own service. The round had in total of 143 investors from 16 different countries.

The Helsinki-based company uses the funding and its EU licence to expand into other European markets. The CEO and Co-founder of Invesdor Lasse Mäkelä states that they aim to be the number one source of European cross-border deal flow for investors around the world.

“There are currently no truly cross-border platforms in the European crowdfunding market”, says Mäkelä, who is an ex-Merrill Lynch investment banker. He sees crowdfunding as a fairly straightforward digitalisation of the tried-and-true fundraising process:

“We have simply removed inefficiencies from the old process and made the deals more transparent, efficient and accessible to the public. The one major element in the crowdfunding model, and fintech in general, is understanding the regulation. It is a hurdle we are confident we have crossed.”

And moving alongside the regulation is something where the company in is frontline – Invesdor is the first European crowdfunding platform that has received a MiFID licence for investment advice, reception and transmission of orders and placing of financial instruments. With the licence, the company can accept investments from international investors and has the right to organize funding rounds for companies from anywhere in the EEA.

“Regulation brings trust. The licence has definitely helped us in our home market, and we are confident that we can also build our international competitive advantage in balance with sustainable compliance. Compliance shouldn’t hinder innovation, and we believe we have the know-how to make it work”, says Mäkelä.

According to the company, the transaction sizes in North European equity crowdfunding have spiked since the Finnish financial supervisory authority made equity crowdfunding a regulated activity this spring – And since Invesdor’s licence was granted in April, two million-euro offerings have been organised on the platform.