Early stage tech investor Marc Cohen has shared the six reasons why he took part in a £2.2m seed investment round in alternative asset provider Ctrl Alt.
Cohen is the sole partner of unbundled vc and joined Forward Partners and Middle Game Ventures, who led on the investment.
Matt Ong, CEO and co-founder of Ctrl Alt, said: “For those of you that don’t know, we’ve raised our seed round to hone in on providing the infrastructure and tools for FinTechs, private banks and other investment platforms to give their customers access to alternative assets.”
In an unusual step, Cohen took to LinkedIn to explain the six reasons why he invested in Matt Ong’s start-up.
Very strong founders
“Matt (Ong) is very strong. He doesn’t fit my prior founder stereotype.”
Building differentiated products that matter
“Ctrl Alt can do something nobody else can. It can sit between investors and alternative assets and bring them together in a regulatory compliant way at a speed and cost structure that nobody else can match. Matt’s background in structured products is a huge help here.”
Scale fast
“Because it is a B2B offering that sits between clients and products, to scale fast you need to find existing businesses that have clients that want product and producers that need to find clients.
“They need a Ctrl Alt to sit between them. If both producers and those businesses are large enough, you can scale very fast. This is the benefit of a B2B approach.”
Huge potential markets
“This enables an almost unimaginably huge potential market. It enables access to those markets in a way that has never previously been possible.
“Others have tried but haven’t built the right tech or structure to do this. This is about creating products that don’t currently exist for those potential clients. Does providing the product at this price point enable something incredible? Does it release unseen demand? That’s the bet here.”
Plausible route to market
“I can’t really talk about this but it’s already happening.”
Great unit economics
“The business is built on great technology that enables this access at a very low price point. The unit economics are great. It’s about providing it at scale in a huge market.”
Marc Cohen, partner of unbundled vc
Other investors include Enterprise Ireland; 365.fintech; SyndicateRoom; Algorand Foundation; Alex Macdonald, co-founder of Velocity Black and Sequel; Omid Ashtari (ex-Google, ex-President Citymapper); and a number of strategic angels.
Megha Prakash, senior investor at Forward Partners said: “Ctrl Alt is a game-changer in the evolving wealthtech landscape.
“We believe there is a massive opportunity to democratise access to financial investments for eligible investors who have been locked out of these markets due to large ticket sizes, administrative complexity and a lack of access.
“Ctrl Alt promises to broaden access to a large range of compelling alternative investments.
“With a strong background in structuring financial products and wealth of experience working in the regulated space, Matt Ong is a great founder to tackle this opportunity.”