Estonia-based KOOS bags €4M for its stakeholder incentivisation platform; here’s what it offers

Tallinn-based KOOS, a SaaS platform that enables businesses to grow with their community by turning stakeholders into co-owners, announced on Thursday, September 29, that it has raised $4M (approximately €4M) in a Seed round of funding.

KOOS says it will use the funds to launch its platform in the UK and across Europe as more companies seek to elevate the role of stakeholders to drive business growth.

Prior to this, the company had raised a pre-Seed round of $600K from various high-profile Estonian founders.

Investors in this round

The round was led by high-profile investors at Plural Platform with participation from LocalGlobe, Tiny.vc and Matt Clifford.

Plural’s investment also comes with the support of founders-turned-investors Taavet Hinrikus, former CEO of Wise, and Sten Tamkivi, co-founder of Teleport, both of whom will take on active advisory roles to accelerate the roll-out of the KOOS platform. 

The investors join a host of other technology founders backing KOOS, including Markus Villig, founder of Bolt, and Kaarel Kotkas, founder and CEO of Verrif. KOOS is built with support from top legal firm Ellex in emerging tech, adopting a recognised legal framework that complies with EU and UK laws.

Sten Tamkivi, adviser and Plural Platform co-founder, says, “Plural wants to invest to help create a more equal society. We believe that broader community ownership leads to more meritocratic systems so that wealth can be distributed based on actual contributions. KOOS has come up with a way to track the support of all stakeholders in a community or business, without having to give away equity. We anticipate that the platform KOOS is building will become an essential building block of many startups, funds and communities including charities and NGOs.”

A community incentivisation platform

KOOS, which means ‘together’ and ‘alongside’ in Estonian, was created to serve organisations that are committed to giving a true stake to their contributors. The KOOS stakeholder incentivisation platform provides a new way of rewarding and motivating everyone who contributes to a company’s growth and success.

The company was founded in 2021 by a serial entrepreneur and former CIO for the Government of Estonia, Taavi Kotka.

A firm may provide its community a cause to support them by using KOOS’ equity-like development plans by offering them more equitable incentives without giving away a single share. These incentives are only given out when the company achieves the established business goal. As a result, KOOS programmes are ROI-positive by design for the firm executing them, and by fairly paying people who made a contribution to the company’s success, they stimulate the stakeholder economy.

Founder Taavi Kotka says, “At KOOS we believe technologies can be used to help build a more equitable society. To be successful you need to deliver great value to all your stakeholders and we have come up with a digital tool that allows businesses to engage and reward their community, widening the circle of people who have access to equity-like incentives which in turn increases the pool of people who will advocate for the business and want it to succeed. We offer companies a new way of achieving their business goals more efficiently, while simultaneously improving their financial and social impact performance.”

Since its introduction to the market just four months ago, 27 early adopter paying customers are running 35 programmes – which include startups, NGOs, SMEs and larger corporations. KOOS’ SaaS pricing model includes an onboarding fee, a monthly retainer, and 1 per cent of all rewards (tokens) created by the programmes on the KOOS platform.

How does KOOS works:

• Set a business objective: Describe a particular objective you wish to accomplish with the assistance of your community.
• Make a commitment for when the business goal is achieved: Confirm the percentage of profits that will be distributed to community contributors.
• Keep track of important actions: Give rewards to everybody who assists you in achieving your company objective. The more activities and tokens you have, the more value your organisation will have in the future.
• Pay out: After achieving your company objective, keep your word and repay your donors. The payments and legal aspects are handled by KOOS.