A London-based funding and trading platform for start-ups has raised $4.5m to power its Asian and European expansion.
Founded in 2013 by Urmas Peiker and Kaidi Ruusalepp, who had been chief executive of Estonia’s Nasdaq Tallinn since 2005, the start-up raised the funds in a round led by UK VC Accelerated Digital Ventures.
It currently has five offices around the globe, and it is hiring staff to keep up with its plans to take its blockchain-powered technology further.
It recently launched in Scandinavia and the UK, providing help to founders to raise private funding from a global network of investors.
Funderbeam currently has 37 young firms on its platform and 10,000 investors, who have collectively traded $2.2m worth shares on its secondary marketplace.
“When I was leading Nasdaq Tallinn, I hated the fact that because of the large central European intermediaries, Estonian investors and companies had very limited access to global capital markets. We were just too small for big players,” said Ruusalepp.
“And when I set up Funderbeam in 2013, it was hard to get access to growth capital and we had to move our HQ closer to money. Those two sides of one story is the heart and soul of Funderbeam – to serve private investments and growth companies no matter where they come from.”
As part of the Co-founder Peiker will leave Funderbeam to focus on growing capital markets in developing countries, focusing on Brazil.
Accelerated Digital Ventures chief executive Lee Strafford said: “Liquidity is fundamental to venture capital. Without a viable liquid market early stage investment is constrained and company growth is negatively impacted. Funderbeam is building a platform which enables liquidity, maintaining the momentum of companies and allowing investors to go again.”