We’ve now issued our shares to all the investors in our record-breaking Crowdcube round, fully concluding the process. Here’s how it went and how we’ll be moving forward!
May 16th was a huge day in Freetrade’s journey.
We smashed our Crowdcube target in 12 minutes, reached £1m in 28 minutes and closed at over £3m as the most overfunded equity offering ever on Crowdcube. We even briefly crashed Crowdcube. All in less than 28 hours, 24 of which were in private mode for our community only!
First up, thank you! Thank you to all of our investors, from our earliest backers to those who discovered us just last week. In our last raise in February 2017, we saw a lot of investments in the £10-£100 range — small bets on a big idea.
This time, we saw a lot of investments around £1000-£2000. This wasn’t an influx of big whales, this was ordinary people putting a big chunk of their savings into Freetrade.
We’re accountable to all of you and we take that incredibly seriously. No pressure, right?
Our post-raise plans haven’t changed but this overfunding empowers us to double down on our biggest ambitions — EU expansion, massively accelerating our product development and delivering truly good crypto investing. We now have superpowers! 🚀
A lot of our previous investors doubled down, and we also saw a lot of new community members take the next step to become investors in us.
With this in mind, we think it’s time to restate some of the principles Freetrade stands for and what will drive us as we build for the future.
The startup world is filled with companies that have a cute idea or some nice tech but are struggling because they don’t solve any deep problems.
Then there are a few companies with the products and purpose to bring dynamic, radical change to whole industries and the lives of their customers.
(We’re in the latter camp).
We think all of our customers and investors feel that this company is more than just a better broker. It’s a necessary part of the shift happening across financial services through companies like Monzo and Transferwise.
Fintech’s hot right now but ultimately only a few companies are going to last to truly reshape the financial industry and culture.
Our investors backed us because they feel we have an extremely good chance of being in that handful. And because they want to see that new culture founded on customer-first principles. 🙏
Which brings us onto…
Other the past year, we’ve built an amazing community, many of whom don’t just want to use our product but were incredibly hungry to own a stake of the company.
Big props to our Head of Growth Viktor who has been the first point of contact for most of our community and has been instrumental in taking us from a compelling startup to a loved and trusted brand.
That love and trust are rare assets in a startup-land full of dicey, chaotic companies.
The fact is if fintech is really going to live up to its potential, we need more than better products. There needs to be a total culture change too.
We go much further than a better technological experience. Our entire operation is unlike any traditional broker or investment firm.
Our business model is unique, aligning with our customers rather than feeding off them.
Everything we do — from how we build our product to how we price to how we communicate with our customers — is about driving a more transparent, familiar and empowering platform and culture for investing.
In that context, it’s essential that we’re building our company as the real deal. Our revolutionary model will be sustained and enhanced rather than diluted over time. 💪
We can do this because we haven’t gone for a hacky compromise or used middlemen to fast track our way there.
Instead, we became a full stack stockbroker: a regulated financial institution with FCA authorisation, a member firm of the LSE and a registered ISA manager. For the first time ever in the UK, we’re bringing that insider access to customers for free.
Make no mistake, we definitely want to increase our product velocity. And we will. But we’ll do it the right way, not by compromising our customers or our business.
This raise puts us on the precipice of everything we want to do at Freetrade.
We’re excited, grateful and a little dizzy. 😄
We have a lot to live up to and we plan on doing so in style!
Let’s go build the world’s best stockbroker. See you on the other side. 🔥
Important Information
This should not be read as personal investment advice and individual investors should make their own decisions or seek independent advice.
When you invest, your capital is at risk. The value of your portfolio can go down as well as up and you may get back less than you invest. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.
Freetrade is a trading name of Freetrade Limited, which is a member firm of the London Stock Exchange and is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Registered in England and Wales (no. 09797821).
