Crowd investors who backed digital banking unicorn Revolut two years ago have now made 19x returns on their original investments.
The London-based FinTech raised just over £1 million through Crowdcube in July 2015. At that point, the company was valued at approximately £42 million.
In April this year Revolut secured a $250 million investment led by DST Global, setting a valuation for the company of around £1.2 billion, making it one of the first crowdfunded unicorns.
After that funding round, crowd investors were offered the opportunity to either sell their shares back to Revolut, or retain them.
Those who chose to sell have now received payment into their bank accounts.
“Consumers tend to have distant relationships with their banks, but we wanted to create a community around the Revolut brand by letting our customers invest and financially benefit as we grew,” said co-founder Nikolay Storonsky.
“Financial gains should not be exclusive to banks, but also to the people which help them grow and succeed.”
Revolut is the second business to join the ranks of Crowdcube’s ‘Unicorn Club’ of companies valued over $1 billion, after BrewDog achieved unicorn status in April 2017.
Luke Lang, co-founder of Crowdcube, added: “This is a huge moment for the finance sector – and for Crowdcube, which was built to give anyone the chance to invest in the next big thing.
“Crowd investors backed Revolut very early in the company’s life, alongside leading venture capital firms, just two years ago.
“Now Revolut’s valuation has soared from £42m to over £1.2 billion and those crowd investors, who put in anything from £10 to £5,000 via Crowdcube’s platform, have made profits of roughly 1,900 per cent on their initial stakes and many have now put the money into their bank accounts.”
Among Revolut’s Crowdcube investors is Jeremy Steinson of Patronus Partners, a London-based investment management firm, bought the maximum £5,000 allocation of Revolut shares
This month he sold a sixth of his allocation, at a 19x multiple.
“This was my third or fourth investment using the Crowdcube platform,” the 32-year-old said.
“My work often involves foreign exchange so knew that the consumer market was ready for disruption and I already had a Revolut card and liked their model, so I put in for the maximum allocation of shares when they raised on Crowdcube two years ago.
“I’ve sold about a sixth of my allocation and I’m retaining the rest of my investment in Revolut, who seem to continue to have a phenomenal growth rate of customers and hopefully look set for more disruption within other areas.”