U.K.-based crowdfunding platform Seedrs reached a major milestone in recent weeks. The company surpassed $1.4 billion (£1 billion) in investments made on its platform.
This comes almost 12 years after the company was founded in 2009 by Carlos Silva and Jeff Lynn as a way for all types of investors to contribute equity funding to startups in Europe.
“We passed many milestones in 2020; from having hit 17 company exits to delivering over 27,000 investor exits on our secondary market,” said CEO Jeff Kelisky. “However, on Christmas Day we passed the £1 billion mark in platform investments.”
Of those 17 exits, seven ocurred in 2020 alone. In total, Seedrs has delivered over $5.5 million (£4 million) in returns to investors, not including profits received by investors on the Seedrs Secondary Market.
Seedrs’ most recent development is its Secondaries Solution that allows founders, employees, and early investors to receive secondary liquidity without having to wait for an IPO or exit event. As Seedrs Manager Josh Davey explained, “Now, I’m excited by the launch of our liquidity solutions for later-stage companies, which will further open up access to investing in pre-IPO companies for retail investors, while providing financial liquidity to some of the founders and employees that have built some of the startups that have come to define how we live in the 21st century.”
In 2016, Seedrs was cited as the most active investor in private companies in the U.K. In October of last year, Seedrs merged with fellow equity crowdfunding platform Crowdcube.
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