Interview of Scott Simpkin, Manager, Campaigns Team of Seedrs.
Can you tell us something about the success of Seedrs?
We recently just raised our Billionth pound in Crowdfunding over the last 10 years for over 1000 businesses now. So, we have been going for a while and it’s going pretty well and also, we have funded 26 businesses in different countries in Europe, so 26 different countries are represented on the Seedrs platform as well in our portfolio.
The UK has always been on the Equity crowdfunding trend. What do you think the Italian ecosystem should do to keep up and how can platforms help?
Well, I think the UK had an unfair advantage because the regulation was so good back in 2010 when Seedrs started and I actually visited Italy in particular 7 years ago and the regulation was just not right for crowdfunding because getting retail investors involved is very hard so I think that gave us an unfair advantage. But the ecosystem has expanded so much in 10 years, we have got partners that help individual businesses raise money, we have got marketing firms that help businesses expand and involve their community so there is a very large ecosystem of support as well for start-ups. We started with the best regulations which allowed us to do that in the first place.
Is it possible for an Italian start-up to do a campaign on Seedrs?
Yes, it is. I have actually helped one personally called ‘Young Platform’. It is a cryptocurrency platform. They raised Euros 600k and a large chunk of their investors came from Italy as well. So yeah, it’s absolutely possible and also in terms of investors Italy is our 4th largest country in Europe so we have the 4th most investors from any European countries from Italy, which is great. So yes, very possible and a lot of Italian investors to invest in our businesses as well.
What have been the most significant campaigns you have followed and what do you see in the future in particular in equity crowdfunding?
So, In the UK 5 of our Unicorns have been equity crowdfunded and that is companies that have reached a Billion pounds in valuation, so the ecosystem is great now I think every company knows that equity crowdfunding is an option for them to involve their community. The largest business we probably funded which you may know is Revolut Bank – the digital bank who are now 5 billion in valuation and there have been a couple of large European fundraises as well- Sono Motors who do the electric cars in Germany and Mate bike an electric bike company in Denmark. So, a lot of really awesome businesses raising now and I think it’s a mainstream option and that’s the great thing we have seen because when I started the job 4 years ago only very few companies wanted to crowdfunded and now in 2021 its an option for everyone.
