When Mujer Investir was founded in 2019, it aimed to create a community where women who wanted to invest in the stock market but didn’t know where to start could gain the knowledge and confidence to dive in. Now your users can do everything within the Female Invest platform.
The Copenhagen-based startup announced this week its acquisition of Danish fintech Gaia Investments and plans to integrate the trading platform, aimed at investing in companies with sustainability goals, into its app. Gaia’s purchase price has not been disclosed, but the startup was valued at $3 million three months before the transaction, Female Invest told TechCrunch.
For Camilla Falkenberg, co-founder and partner of Female Invest, adding the ability to invest directly through Female Invest is an excellent next step for the subscription-based edtech platform.
“Since day one, we’ve always been very focused on creating the features and products our community has been asking for,” said Falkenberg. “And we receive orders every day to trade directly through us.”
He added that he believes the platform receives this request so often because its users trust it. A recent customer survey showed that 96% of them would trust Female Invest money more than their bank.
Female Invest has spent the past year building up the business so that trading can be more easily integrated as well. Falkenberg said that since the first $4.5 million round last November, they’ve built an app, expanded the tech team and raised another $3 million in funding.
But when they got to know Gaia Investments in July, they realized it might make more sense and save time for Female Invest to partner with an existing trading platform instead of building their own.
“Gaia has a strong brand here in Scandinavia and a strong commitment to ethics and sustainable investing, which is also very important to us,” he said. “As the negotiations progressed, it became increasingly clear that this was a big step forward for us.”
The Gaia team felt the same way, Mads Sverre Willumsen, co-founder and CTO, told TechCrunch.
“We met with Female Invest and saw the journey they have been on for the past three years,” she said. “After talking a bit and seeing that we have a line-up, the decision wasn’t that hard.”
The two companies also shared a similar founding story: both were trying to create an investment product they felt was needed and didn’t exist.
At Female Invest, the founders realized in 2019 that there was no good source to teach women how to start investing. For Gaia, that was when the mother of co-founder and CEO David Bentzon-Ehlers asked him in 2020 if there was a safe place to invest in sustainable companies, and he discovered that the platform he was looking for did not yet exist.
While it’s not very common for startups to be acquired this early (Gaia had just completed a TechStars Accelerator program a few months earlier), Sverre Willumsen said the transaction made sense for Gaia as they were more interested in her expanding your reach. expand product. as a startup founder.
“I didn’t become a founder in the first place to be a founder,” he said. “I did it because it was an opportunity to quickly create a lot of innovation and a difference for people.”
Current Gaia users will be laid off in the near future and their funds will be refunded in full when the platform begins to integrate with Female Invest. Falkenberg said he does not yet have a specific launch date for Female Invest users, but the ability to trade will be rolled out first in the European Union and then in the UK.
Consolidation of early-stage startups has been an upward trend this year, and as the fintech industry grapples with the uncertainty of 2022, it seems prudent for some of these smaller companies to band together to avoid being left behind. I’m sure we’ll see more of that in the coming year.
However, for Female Invest, the long-term plan applies regardless of market conditions.
“Our vision is to create an extremely user-friendly and easy-to-navigate sustainability-focused platform to invest in the values that matter to you,” said Falkenberg. “We have a very loyal user base waiting for us to release the next product, which is a good starting point.”
Source: La Neta Neta
Jason Jack is an experienced technology journalist and author at The Nation View. With a background in computer science and engineering, he has a deep understanding of the latest technology trends and developments. He writes about a wide range of technology topics, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, software development, and cybersecurity.
