Funderbeam, an Estonian-built marketplace for startup investments built on Blockchain, has just raised a $2.6 million funding round from Draper Associates, Thomson Reuters, and IQ Capital. Previous investors — business angels and 3TS Capital Partners — have also participated in the round.
Founded in 2013, Funderbeam has created a platform where companies are funded and traded across borders, powered by Blockchain technology. Funderbeam is challenging the traditional capital markets full of inefficiency, intermediaries and costly for companies.
Founder and CEO, Kaidi Ruusalepp stated, “Funderbeam is the future of exchanges, combining three things in one: data, funding & trading, and it’s all happening across borders and on Blockchain technology.”
“Last year angels and VC’s invested in startups more than 110 billion dollars. Startups are the real growth companies — who used to list on stock markets. The problem with startup investments is that it has no liquidity. For this, Funderbeam has built a totally new exchange model, born global and built for startups from the beginning. We’ll grow with them. We bring liquidity back to investing.”
One of the leading members of the round is Draper Associates, and founder Tim Draper has serious opinions about the current state of the markets:
“Over the past 10 years stock markets have stopped working. They’re just not functioning anymore. Companies used to go public to gain access to growth capital, now they list for cashing out. Angels, VC’s, and private equity is gradually replacing the need, but the flow is “offline” on papers and there is no liquidity.”, said Tim Draper, and continued, “It’s crazy that the sector investing into innovation is using processes from the last century. It was the time to take the startup industry to the Blockchain century! And reprogram public markets!”
This reprogramming is exactly what Funderbeam is striving to do, and has already started doing. To date, Funderbeam has launched three successful funding campaigns, and all these investments are now tradable on the Blockchain.
Co-founder, Urmas Peiker further elaborated on Funderbeam’s day-to-day approach, “There are some who maintain the status quo, others who talk a good game but won’t scale or build growth, and then there are those whom I’d call silent revolutionaries. These are the companies and entrepreneurs who ‘float like a butterfly and sting like a bee’. This is how we initially envisioned Funderbeam- put the ego away and get the job done.”
London-based VC, IQ Capital, joins the round, will be a good connection for Funderbeam, as the company moves more and more activity to The UK. Partner, Max Bautin, states: “Funderbeam has a very strong and highly ambitious founder-team aiming to disrupt a multi trillion-dollar market. We are very excited to back them on this”
In addition to the new investors, all previous investors of Funderbeam are also joining the round, including Rockspring, 3TS Capital Partners, Jaan Tallinn, Kei Aar, David Braben, Chris Wade, Joe Schorge, Tim Parsonson, Richard Parsonson, Simon Thorpe, Murali Krishna, Pascal Isbell, David Cummings.3TS Capital Partners, one of the leading European tech growth investors and earliest backers of Funderbeam are glad to continue backing funderbeam: “We’ve been impressed by the vision and passion of the Funderbeam team since the beginning. They have built a platform that will change the way startup financing is done and it is great to have the support of new partners who are equally excited about Funderbeam’s plans.”, said Pekka Maki, Managing Partner of 3TS Capital Partners.
Funderbeam is based in Tallinn, Estonia, but moved HQ to London a year ago.
Funderbeam was founded in 2013 by Kaidi Ruusalepp, Urmas Peiker and Villu Arak. To date, the company has raised $2m, not including the latest round.