Funderbeam, a new global marketplace for startup investments built on blockchain, has just raised a $2.6 million funding round from Draper Associates, Thomson Reuters, and IQ Capital. Previous investors-business angels and 3TS Capital Partners have also participated in the round.
Founded in 2013 by Kaidi Ruusalepp, Urmas Peiker and Villu Arak, Funderbeam has created a platform where companies are funded and traded across borders, powered by blockchain technology. Funderbeam is challenging the traditional capital markets full of inefficiency, intermediaries and costly for companies.
Founder and CEO, Kaidi Ruusalepp stated, “Funderbeam is the future of exchanges, combining three things in one: data, funding, and trading, and it’s all happening across borders and on blockchain technology.”
“Last year angels and VC’s invested in startups more than 110 billion dollars. Startups are the real growth companies — who used to list on stock markets. The problem with startup investments is that it has no liquidity. For this, Funderbeam has built a totally new exchange model, born global and built for startups from the beginning. We’ll grow with them. We bring liquidity back to investing.”
One of the leading members of the round is Draper Associates, and founder Tim Draper has serious opinions about the current state of the markets:
“Over the past 10 years stock markets have stopped working. They’re just not functioning anymore. Companies used to go public to gain access to growth capital, now they list for cashing out. Angels, VC’s, and private equity is gradually replacing the need, but the flow is “offline” on papers and there is no liquidity.”, said Tim Draper, and continued, “It’s crazy that the sector investing into innovation is using processes from the last century. It was the time to take the startup industry to the blockchain century! And reprogram public markets!”
This reprogramming is exactly what Funderbeam is striving to do, and has already started doing.
To date, Funderbeam has launched three successful funding campaigns, and all these investments are now tradable on the blockchain.
