Today is a big day. It’s a big step for Seedrs and, I believe, a day that will prove to be a giant leap for the industry. I’m hugely excited to announce that we have entered into an agreement with Republic, the U.S. based private investment platform, to acquire Seedrs in order to build, together, the first global private investment platform.
The last ten years have been an incredible journey for Seedrs: we have taken the business from a startup, disrupting the early-stage investment world, to Europe’s leading online private investment platform that has facilitated almost £1.5 billion investments to date and hosted some of the industry’s most significant success stories, including the likes of Revolut and Allplants.
We have consistently led innovation in the industry on several fronts, delivering several industry firsts – innovations that we have since seen others follow in our wake.
- We were the first crowdfunding platform to become regulated in 2012.
- We were the first to enable a nominee structure to protect the rights of investors at scale.
- We were the first to launch a digital secondary market in 2017 which is now trading shares in over 200 private businesses each month.
- We were the first to launch an algorithmic auto-invest product for both retail and institutional investors in private company investing in 2018.
- Finally, we were the first to open up APIs into a private investment platform for other players in the fintech ecosystem to integrate into, as we did with Capdesk in 2020.
None of this would have been possible without the hard work of our team, the businesses and entrepreneurs who sought to use us and the fantastic community of investors who continue to support them.
Jeff Lynn and Carlos Silva launched Seedrs in 2012 with the vision of democratising investment and supporting an emerging European startup ecosystem that needed better access to finance. It has been a long road, but as we’ve grown so has the market and the industry’s credibility, and throughout, the mission remains unchanged.
We have always believed that, ultimately, you need to be a player of scale to serve the market effectively and operate cross-border across all key markets. With Republic and Seedrs leading in our respective geographies, each having developed unique strengths in product and market terms, the combination of the two platforms firmly puts us on the front foot to offer far better customer products and services, on the global stage as we continue to scale.
Today’s announcement also includes the capital for Seedrs to turbo-charge our European expansion. Both Republic & Seedrs see great potential in Europe as the next key growth market for private equity investment. With this in mind, today’s deal sees Republic commit to making a substantial investment into Seedrs to accelerate expansion in the region, helping to deliver new innovations and products for European private businesses and their investors.
I am excited to say that Seedrs will not only continue to serve the exciting UK and European businesses and investors, but with Republic’s firepower behind us, we will continue to redefine the segment by leading on innovation, customer service, supporting diversity, and trust.
Our mission remains unchanged, but now we will have more resources to continue building innovative products that serve our business and investors in the best way possible.
As a global entity Republic and Seedrs see a bright future ahead of us.
There will be much more to come as we complete the deal over the next few months and work together to build a powerful platform that delivers on the strengths of both businesses and provides direct access to European and US investors.
Jeff Kelisky, CEO