crowdcubethe first securities crowdfunding platform launched in the UK and now operating in Continental Europe.
This is an adjustment to market realities as investors want alternatives. Since many of these businesses fail, not everyone is willing to take on the risk of a fledgling or very early stage startup. More mature companies tend to carry less risk. As private markets grow, with promising firms remaining private for as long as possible, more investors are interested in joining later-stage private firms.
Crowdcube, with its latest version Partnership with the London Stock Exchange and its fish platform has taken another step towards becoming an investment platform that provides full service to its users.
The LSE partnership increases Crowdcube’s existing late-stage securities offerings. Crowdcube stated in a blog post:
“Over the past 12 months, Crowdcube has placed share blocks in Mistral ($14bn valuation), Perplexity ($21bn valuation), Atom Bank (£397m valuation) and BOLT (£5bn) ahead of its anticipated IPO, helping Chip complete an £11m share sale, both primary and secondary, and backing the largest secondary event by number of sellers ever recorded in the UK and EU – 24,000 shareholders.”
“We have a unique position in the market today. We win against much larger players because we offer companies a full menu of options, and almost every situation in our universe has different requirements,” he says Matt CooperCo-CEO of Crowdcube. “Our highly differentiated platform allows companies to choose the solution that exactly fits their needs.”
Crowdcube notes that a secondary offering can also be paid for with a new issue. Crowdcube adds that the Public Offering Platform (POP) designation allows unlimited offerings without a full prospectus.
Crowdcube also serves institutions.
All of this is emblematic of the transformation of platforms that started as early-stage investment platforms and have since scaled into later-stage offerings/pre-IPO opportunities. A natural progression over time will be tokenization, crypto and public securities. Add banking features to this list.
