The InsurTech has raised almost 拢5.4 million from more than 500 investors via Seedrs – surpassing its goal by more than 拢268,000.

In August the Leicester-headquartered company announced triple-digit annual growth.

The first half of 2021 saw revenues at DeadHappy – which adopts a straight-talking approach to planning for death – grow by over 120% compared to the same period last year.听

The business saw a whopping 87% year-on-year rise in consumers searching for 鈥榙eathwishes鈥� on its platform. Considered the brand鈥檚 USP, these are a way of helping customers express what they want to happen when they die.

DeadHappy

More than 213,000 deathwishes have now been made by its customers while the company has sold more than 18,600 life insurance plans to date.

鈥淪ome of the options we give them are the financial, responsible stuff 鈥� we have standard deathwishes for paying off the mortgage, school fees, one for debt,鈥� co-founder Phil Zeidler recently told our sister website TechBlast, while also revealing how .

鈥淲e get the real engagement from customers when it comes to the other stuff: opting for a Viking or Star Wars funeral; to have your ashes fired into space so you鈥檙e up there when your loved ones look up at the stars at night. We partner with companies that can carry out these wishes.

鈥淚t might be leaving a pot of money to buy their son a brand new football kit every season or sending a bunch of very good mates on a final golfing tour in Vegas 鈥� one last hurrah.

鈥淚f you do this on a life insurance policy, you can put a pot of 拢25,000 in there for them and it might only cost you an extra 拢50 a month. You can do some pretty amazing things.鈥�

Venture capital backers in previous rounds include Octopus, Headline, 4Ventures, Verso and Volution.

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The 鈥榝inancial super app鈥� for money management is to expand into Europe and grow its product offerings.

Plum鈥檚 first close of funding saw notable investment from investors including dmg ventures, Ventura Capital, Global Brain, Venture Friends and 500 Startups.

It then ran a second round on Crowdcube which became the fourth most popular fundraise of all time on the platform in Europe by number of investors, which reached 9,712.

The business also received additional investment from investors, bringing the total fundraise to 拢18m.

Last year Plum saw a 189% increase in year-on-year revenue while it has recently been given regulatory approval to offer investments in the EU, with plans to expand its customer base with launches in the Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium Italy, Finland, Austria and Germany in the year ahead.听

It says it is now on track to reach 2.5m registered customers across Europe by the end of 2021.

Its upcoming new products include a US stock investing tool which will start opening up to customers from early December. A full rollout will follow in Q1 2022, with the stocks feature being added to the Plum Splitter later in the year, enabling customers to invest easily and continuously using its automated functionality.

The FinTech is also developing a payment card which will, through its automated savings service, help customers鈥� everyday spending and budgeting. Access to EU and UK stocks and crypto assets will follow later in 2022.

鈥淲e are delighted to have had such strong engagement from investors in this latest funding round,鈥� said CEO and co-founder Victor Trokoudes.听

鈥淚t shows that people trust our service, which offers truly innovative ways to build wealth, and are keen to support our ambitious growth plan to become the most successful financial app out there.

鈥淐rowdfunding was a key part of our early success, and we are pleased so many people want to continue to support our development and mission to provide tools to make more people financially secure.

鈥淥ur journey has been all about realising our initial vision and building a product that puts people and their finances first. As we approach our five-year anniversary next January, I am proud of how far we have come from our beginnings.听

鈥淲e started as a simple chatbot but have grown to become one of Europe鈥檚 leading money management services, with sophisticated tools to help people save, spend and invest better for the long-term.鈥�

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The investment aligns two of the most prominent and pioneering platforms in their respective markets: Crowdcube is the largest equity crowdfunding platform in Europe with 1.2 million members and 拢1 billion invested.听

The strategic partnership will help pave the way to a global marketplace at every level of private fundraising, from seed stage to public offering.听

Historically, the UK and the US have been the most developed markets for equity crowdfunding but that all changed on November 10th with new European-wide regulations. The investment will enable Crowdcube to accelerate its launch into Europe, capitalising on the recent regulation that provides uniform rules across Europe for capital raising and retail investment services.

The investment, in which existing backers Molten Ventures (formerly Draper Esprit) and Balderton Capital also participated, supports Crowdcube鈥檚 goals to enable entrepreneurs to raise capital from their dedicated communities wherever they are in the UK or Europe and is Circle鈥檚 largest strategic investment to date in the European market.听

鈥淐ombining Circle鈥檚 strategic investment with our decade of knowledge and experience of capital raising in Europe, Crowdcube is extremely well positioned to capitalise on our first-mover advantage into Europe鈥檚 high growth investment market,鈥� said Darren Westlake, CEO and co-founder of Crowdcube.

鈥淐apital raising and private company investing have never been so exciting. In the first instance, we鈥檙e considering a crowd round to offer Crowdcube鈥檚 community of investors the opportunity to participate in our round, alongside Circle, supporting our growth as Europe鈥檚 preferred private investment marketplace.鈥�

Ryan Feit, director of Circle and CEO and co-founder of SeedInvest, added: 鈥淧rivate capital online fundraising is at a pivotal moment of maturation. We are thrilled to work with Crowdcube to roll out online fundraising across Europe and are confident this will be a significant milestone towards the inevitable global future of the industry.

鈥淓xpanding online fundraising to new markets creates a massive opportunity for internet native capital formation where individuals and businesses can connect and transact digitally from anywhere.鈥�

With the recent regulatory changes, companies in the UK and EU will now be able to raise up to 鈧�13m from retail investors in a single offering of either primary or secondary shares (鈧�8m from UK investors and 鈧�5m from European investors).听

Crowdcube announced earlier this month that it will be the first platform with pan-European and UK regulatory approvals.听

Feit will join Crowdcube鈥檚 board and Jeremy Allaire, CEO and co-founder of Circle, will be an observer.听

Crowdcube recently achieved a record year of growth with 拢200 million invested (+21% YoY) and over 208,000 investments made. Its community has grown this year, with 174,000 new members bringing the total to 1.2m.听

The FinTech has raised around 拢30m in total from both institutional and retail investors.

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Mattias Ljungman helped fund Klarna, Viagogo, Peakon and ClimateCorp at the earliest stage and is now backing the first post-exit venture from SuperAwesome founder Joshua Wohle.

The online child safety company was snapped up by Fortnite creator Epic Games earlier this year.听

Mindstone has also launched a crowdfunding campaign to give supporters 鈥榯he opportunity to democratise and invest in the future of learning鈥�.

Moonfire Ventures founder Ljungman鈥檚 pre-launch commitment is joined by Techstars managing director Eamonn Carey, among others, with a total of more than 拢600,000 already raised.听

Founded in 2020, Mindstone allows experts from all walks of life to create engaging courses, built using the best pre-existing online articles, podcasts, and videos, helping people learn faster and remember more about a wide range of topics, from Astrophysics to Zoology.听

鈥淥nline education is broken. Providers and courses too often simply replicate traditional in-person teaching methods in an online environment, and are typically bound to static, one-size-fits-all curricula,鈥� said Wohle.

鈥淲e are rethinking online education from the ground up to solve this problem. The internet is the greatest knowledge bank in human history, and our platform makes it as easy for anyone to build a course from existing high-quality online material as it is to curate a playlist on Spotify.听

鈥淢eanwhile, our compound learning approach – course content evolves based on questions and feedback from learners to continuously enhance the experience – puts learners themselves at the heart of everything, as they should be.

鈥淭o have investors of the calibre of Mattias and Eamonn come on board at this early stage is a huge vote of confidence in the importance of what we鈥檙e doing here and the ability of the team to deliver the impact we know will result if we succeed.听

鈥淢indstone is all about democratising access to learning and teaching, so a crowdfunding campaign at this stage made perfect sense – we鈥檙e excited to invite everyone to join us in this round and on our journey.鈥�

Mindstone already has several well-known organisations and individuals using the platform to create courses, including The Bitcoin Association (Bitcoin Basics), Landscape VC (How To Raise Funding For Your Startup), Flown (How To Do Deep Work) Radix (An Overview of Radix DLT), The Body Collective (Women鈥檚 Health: How To Live Your Best Life After 40) and Seed Legals (How to Launch an Option Program).听

In addition, several online influencers have contributed courses, including Jack Edwards, a lifestyle, travel, and literature blogger (How To Be A Better Reader); 鈥榮tudytuber鈥� Unjaded Jade (How to Self Study); Vix Meldrew (How to Build Your Personal Brand on Instagram); and Eleanor Neale (How to Research a True Crime Case).

Mindstone has also recently signed a commercial partnership with one of the world鈥檚 most widely-respected publishers, Harvard 老九品茶 Review. HBR will be one of the first media companies to work with Mindstone.听听

Jim Bodor, MD of digital product strategy at HBR.org, said: 鈥淲e are excited to see if Mindstone鈥檚 innovative tools add a new layer of functionality to HBR.org for our users.鈥�

Ljungman added: 鈥淚 am always on the hunt for the next category-creating disruptor, and when Joshua first described Mindstone to me, I knew I had to invest. He and the team at Mindstone have put the science of learning at the core of everything they do – creating a new way to approach education that is truly tailored to the individual learner.听

鈥淭hat rigor, combined with accessibility, could see Mindstone transform how we learn and manage knowledge on the scale that Wikipedia has done over the past two decades. I am excited to see this crowdfund affirm Mindstone鈥檚 potential and supercharge its mission to make learning better for everyone.鈥澨�

Mindstone has raised 拢1.6 million to date in a seed round led by Ljungman鈥檚 Moonfire Ventures and including The Fund, Zanichelli Venture, Nex.D, and a number of angels, including Wohle鈥檚 former co-founders at SuperAwesome.听

The platform is already available on desktop, iOS, and Android – the crowdfunding will support an increased focus on mobile, as well as further research and development, hiring, and commercial partnerships.

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As part of the record-breaking round, Chip raised 拢1m in under 10 minutes and hit 拢8.6m in under 48 hours.听

It saw the company add 6,500 new investors, growing its shareholder community to over 23,000 and making it the second biggest investor community in UK FinTech.

In the last year the company has increased revenues 500%, grown its user base by more than 60% to over 400,000 and processed more than 拢640m in savings.

The company plans on using the capital to fuel growth activities across marketing, product and technology. Chip is also looking to significantly increase the size of the team as it eyes European expansion.

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鈥淲e鈥檝e been blown away by the response to our latest crowdfunding campaign. This is a huge validation of the strong position Chip is in, and our ambitions to build the next FinTech unicorn,鈥� said CEO and founder Simon Rabin.

鈥淲e have massive plans for the next 12 months. From a product perspective, we鈥檙e looking at more market-leading savings accounts, more investment funds, and more automatic investing. We also have aggressive growth plans, across several marketing channels, as we aim to increase our user base further.

鈥淚t鈥檚 safe to say this is extraordinary, we鈥檙e very excited about all the incredible features we鈥檙e going to deliver, the growth this round is going to fuel, and having even more shareholders and users on board for the next stage of our journey.听

鈥淲e’re building the best savings account in the world, and we’ve only just begun.鈥�

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Ziglu was launched in 2018 by Starling Bank founder and CTO Mark Hipperson and its technology gives customers easy and insured access to cryptocurrencies.

Ziglu has proved popular with investors as it鈥檚 one of the few FinTechs that builds its own cloud banking platform.

Their technology provides customers with a current account that enables them to instantly and competitively buy, sell, hold, send and spend both digital and traditional currency.

Ziglu also plan to launch euro accounts with market-leading FX rates.

The tech firm’s previous crowdfund campaign on the Seedrs platform in September 2020 had a target of 拢1m but raised more than 拢6m from 1,245 investors and was oversubscribed within three hours.

Their latest target was to raise 拢1m but the current total stands at 拢2,871,580 from 984 investors with 21 days left.

On Twitter Ziglu posted: 鈥淲e鈥檙e blown away by the support and incredibly excited about the future.鈥�

We reached our target of 拢1M on Seedrs in just 81 minutes, gaining 500+ a day later… and now we鈥檝e just passed our next milestone of 拢2M, only three days after launching our crowdfund!!
We鈥檙e blown away by the support and incredibly excited about the future!

鈥� Ziglu (@ZigluMoney)

Ziglu has raised a total of 拢12m to date and was the largest Seedrs equity campaign in 2020.

It鈥檚 been a good week for the award-winning company as they鈥檝e just been chosen to be part of Tech Nation鈥檚 FinTech 4.0, which is an exclusive network of high growth UK FinTech companies.

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Founded by James Brown of BrewDog and backed by Alex Moore of Rosa鈥檚, Gary Dolman of Monzo and Simon Bocca, formerly of Fourth, TiPJAR crushed its original funding target of 拢400,000 in hours and with over a week of funding time still left on the pitch.

Backers include Honest Burger co-founders Phil Eeles and Tom Barton, plus a host of other industry experts who back their vision of bringing transparency and staff control over their tips via TiPJAR鈥檚 HMRC-cleared platform which connects customers and staff directly.听

TiPJAR exists to help tipped workers as cash disappears. This raise will turbo-boost our huge vision, and help us fulfil TiPJAR鈥檚 potential to bring fair and transparent cashless tipping to the world,鈥� said CEO Ben Thomas.

鈥淎s a company built on sharing gratitude: today the tables have turned as we share how grateful we are to all 770 people that have chosen to back our business so far.

鈥淭hese funds will really give us more growth capital and enable us to invest more into our US Team as well as turbo charge our trajectory for expansion across the globe.鈥�

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Brown added: 鈥淭he results of this raise to date proves that the world is changing their perception of the industry, and are finally seeing the desperate need for transparency surrounding tips.听

鈥淥ur dedication to this cause is why so many have already chosen to invest in our business. I couldn鈥檛 be more proud of all that Ben and the TiPJAR team members in the UK, US and EU have achieved in such a short space of time.鈥�

TiPJAR has now launched in over 1,650 venues across four countries, and plans to use the funds raised to further expand into the US market – where it has recently partnered with Visa to help workers who are earning less as cash payments decline.听

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Cubex allows听retail investors to buy and sell shares in private firms.听

The crowdfunding site said it launched the secondary marketplace in response to growing demand from its portfolio of companies and the trend of businesses staying private for longer.听

It said Cubex satisfies demand among existing shareholders to realise a return without the need to wait for an exit, while听offering听new investors the opportunity to invest in proven, high-growth, pre-IPO businesses that they鈥檝e long admired but previously could not access.听

It wrote:听鈥�Gone are the days when a successful exit for businesses and investors meant only a blockbuster IPO or acquisition.听听

鈥�As companies stay private for听longer, and听grow faster and become more valuable than ever before, this is a real boon for retail investors: a European marketplace to buy and sell equity in early-stage category-definers.鈥�听

Crowdcube听has previously听arranged one-off secondary transactions for multiple companies in听its听portfolio.听

Most notably,听Revolut听shareholders achieved 20x returns in 2018, and听BrewDog听investors made 1.8 times their investments in 2017.听听

A听recent secondary share sale for听Freetrade听saw shareholders celebrate returns up to 47x (4,670%). Six of the company鈥檚 shareholders became millionaires as the company鈥檚 valuation skyrocketed from 拢2m when it first raised on听Crowdcube听to 拢265m at their latest funding round earlier this year.听

鈥�As the age, size and profile of companies that raise capital via听Crowdcube听become older, larger and higher, Cubex will play a truly essential role in the way our investors and companies interact and benefit from one another鈥檚 presence on our platform,鈥� the statement continued.听听

鈥�Cubex allows companies to rejuvenate their shareholder registers with new blood; it rewards early supporters for their loyal backing, and it gives investors the chance to get behind Europe鈥檚 most ambitious businesses whose doors would otherwise be closed to them.鈥�听

The full roll-out of听Cubex听will take place听over the next few听months.听

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Exeter-headquartered Crowdcube and London-based Seedrs are the two largest equity crowdfunding platforms in the UK.听 听

The听Competition and Markets Authority, having听investigated听the听proposed merger,听concluded that听it would result in the combined company having at least a 90% share of an听鈥榠mportant market鈥�.听

It found that the companies competed听closely against each other to win the business of SMEs, with a significant number of businesses viewing equity crowdfunding as their only way to secure financial backing.听听

鈥淎 deal between the two could result in UK SMEs and investors losing out听as a result of听higher fees and less innovation…听The CMA鈥檚 initial view is that blocking the merger may be the only way of addressing these competition concerns,鈥� it said.听

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Jeff听Kelisky听and听Jeff Lynn, CEO and听Executive Chairman听of听Seedrs听respectively,听revealed the decision in a joint statement,听as did听Darren Westlake, CEO of听Crowdcube.听

鈥�Following on our message about the CMA鈥檚 provisional findings yesterday, I wanted to share with you that we have agreed to terminate our merger with听Crowdcube,鈥� said the听Seedrs听duo, who said earlier that they felt the CMA had听鈥済otten it wrong鈥�.听听

They continued:听鈥�We fervently disagree with the CMA鈥檚听view, but听given the low likelihood that they will change their mind at this point, we have concluded that it does not make sense to continue the battle.鈥�听

They added that they had听prepared for the听possibility听of the deal being blocked by raising a funding round, the details of which will be announced soon.听

In his statement, Westlake added: 鈥�Crowdcube听recorded outstanding levels of growth in the last 12 months and remains in a very strong financial position following record revenue in 2020 and two consecutive quarters of profitability.听听

鈥淲e continue to invest in our people and products, and we expect to be profitable again in the first half of 2021, with an unprecedented level of high-profile European businesses set to fundraise with us in the coming weeks.听

鈥淲e are excited by the growing market opportunity in the UK and across Europe and we will share further updates on our plans for the future in due course.鈥�听

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Kirstin Baker, Chair of the CMA inquiry group, said:听鈥淚nvestment in small and growing businesses is vital to the UK economy as we emerge from the coronavirus pandemic, and we have given this deal careful consideration.听听

鈥�These are the two largest equity crowdfunding platforms in the UK, with at least a 90% share of the market between them and we see them competing closely on price and innovation. This means the merger could lead to less choice and higher fees for SMEs and investors.听

鈥淲e have therefore reached the view that blocking this merger is likely to be the best way to maintain competition. The decision to block any deal is not taken lightly and is only made if there is a real risk of customers losing out.鈥�听

听

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