This week it is time for another overview of interesting startup fundings. While VanMoof has closed its equity crowdfunding campaign, raising the maximum amount of €2.5M, the Amsterdam-based AxonIQ raised a substantial seed investment from Volta Ventures. In other news, ABN AMRO continues to invest in Swedish startup Tink Technology, while Endeit Capital alongside previous investors poured €9M in Austrian scaleup Tourradar .
VanMoof
VanMoof has been a hot topic as the company recently closed an investment round of €4M. This was made possible by Dutch venture capital firm Slingshot. And now, a little over two weeks later, the company has raised €2.5M during their equity crowdfunding campaign to secure the international growth of the innovative bike platform. This campaign has broken all records in the Netherlands, making it the most successful campaign on a Dutch platform to date. Previously, the company had announced that it had reached €1M within 48 hours. The campaign ran through Europe’s leading sustainable crowdfunding platform OnePlanetCrowd and started on October 10.
VanMoof co-founder and CEO Taco Carlier stated the following: “The result of the crowdfunding campaign has exceeded all our expectations. With the trust from Slingshot and all our fans who have invested, we can secure the next step to international growth. We will increase our bike production, invest in research and technology, and open new Flagship Stores worldwide.”
Unique in a number of ways
This is a unique campaign for a number of reasons. The campaign followed shortly after Slingshot’s investment in the company. This enabled fans to benefit from the thorough due diligence performed by the venture capitalist. In addition, VanMoof has given their riders the opportunity to invest before the campaign opened to the public.
AxonIQ
However, this startup requires some more elaboration. AxonIQ, a company based in Amsterdam, is a provider of a software platform for event-based microservices systems. In short, it provides an open source Java platform that can solve common application complexities to enable developers to focus on the essence of business problems. The company has announced raising a substantial seed investment from Volta Ventures this week.
Growing the product offering
Reportedly, the amount raised would be somewhere in the region between €1M and €2M. According to Jeroen Speekenbrink, CEO and co-founder of AxonIQ, the company will be able to grow its product offering because of the investment. This includes hiring even more developers, broadening marketing efforts but also expanding internationally. A wide range of organizations in a number of fast-paced and demanding sectors are already using the Axon Framework. These include big corporations but also startups. Some of these big corporations are Barclays, Toyota and Promontech.
The opportunity to create business value
The Axon Framework is actually a very popular choice in the Java world. Therefore, AxonIQ’s roots go way back to when this framework was first initiated. The Axon Framework reduces the complexity of application development, creating the opportunity for developers to create business value. Allard Buijze, founder, and CTO of AxonIQ, stated the following: “The AxonIQ platform allows organizations to focus on the business features and not worry about the technical implications of running at scale.”
Volta Ventures has also made a statement regarding the investment and AxonIQ as a whole. According to the investor, the well-balanced team, the unique product, and services offering and a well-defined business proposition are the primary reasons for the investment. “We’ve been impressed with the clear vision and straight-forward execution plan,” says Sander Vonk, a partner at Volta Ventures.”
ABN AMRO and Endeit Capital
In other news, ABN AMRO has continued their collaboration with Swedish company Tink. The Swedish fintech company Tink has signed agreements with banks Nordea, Klarna and Nordnet. These new banks will join ABN AMRO and Sweden’s SEB as partners of Tink. ABN AMRO started the partnership in 2016, as the company developed and launched ABN AMRO PFM app Grip in the same year.
Concluding, the Austrian tour booking platform Tourradar has reaches a total amount of €9M investment funding due to Endeit Capital’s investment. The investor made the decision in exchange for a minority interest in the company. Other investors during this round were Erik Blachford, Cherry Ventures from Berlin and Hoxton Ventures from London. Tourradar was launched in 2010 and is considered to be the leading company in the digital transformation of the multi-day touring industry. At this moment, 90% of all group tours in the market are being booked offline. Tourradar offers a relatively young group of travelers an online platform for verified tours. Subsequently, tours can be compared and reviews on them can be read and written. Eventually, the group tours can be booked online with one click of a button.
