Iām holding both FT and Draper Esprit. These news made my day yesterday!
5 Likes
Great news!
Good read, thanks.
Traditionally, buying and selling shares has been an expensive, time-consuming affair, used predominantly by people in their middle age or outsourced to advisors. Online stockbroking has therefore paid little attention to fees, user experience or a younger generation of potential customers. Fees of between Ā£5 and Ā£11 or more per trade are common, and multiple hidden charges are rife. A lack of competition has enabled incumbents to stand still. The promise of everyone being able to access public markets, and the potential wealth this creates, has therefore been restricted to a smaller, wealthy segment of the market.
It is not new to say that challenger companies are making waves within markets across the globe, providing simple and intuitive alternatives to everything from grabbing a taxi to transferring money, almost instantly, with a swipe on your smartphone. Public market investing is no different, and we are glad to see that there is a new market opening up with a few companies tackling this problem. Millennials want to build and manage their own future and invest in the companies they know and love.
Fintech is enabling new companies to destroy these fees and create amazing new user experiences in financial services, just as people start to become more interested in taking back control of their finances. As a major VC investor in fintech we are seeing this across all areas of banking, investing and insurance; we have been very fortunate to have been investors in Transferwise, Crowdcube, Revolut, N26 and others who all share this mission to put the customer back at the forefront.
Indeed, our very own mission is to open VC investing to all, with low fees and strong liquidity. We want people to be able to buy our shares easily and cheaply and have access to the fastest growing private technology companies in the UK and Europe.
Step in Freetrade
Freetrade is a challenger broker that is on a mission to change the face of trading and make stock investing appeal to every generation ā especially millennials. With the mission of opening up investment opportunities, enabling everyone to invest for the long term, they are focused on making investing more transparent and more affordable.
Freetrade empowers its users to trade on a rapidly growing universe of global stocks, ETFS, and Investment trusts across the UK (and soon Europe) in an accessible, affordable, and seamless way. Where incumbents charge up to Ā£12 per trade, Freetrade charges Ā£0 for basic orders (executed at 4 pm) or just Ā£1 for an instant order, removing the current barriers for entry as well as limiting hidden fees elsewhere.
They also have a pipeline of innovative products which we are excited aboutāthe first with global fractional shares, for example, which enable you to buy a percentage of AMZN or TSLA, rather than fork out over $1000 each, mean they have been able to attract a younger cohort of users.
But itās community that is the beacon of Freetrade. With over 700 new forum posts every week, and a user base that has grown by 300% in the past year, the company has developed a steadfast following that genuinely cares. The Freetradecommunity takes an active role in company growth; regularly suggesting improvements, voting on new features and inviting friends to join the fee-free movement.
And, this community has been investing in Freetrade from the beginning. In fact, they recently completed the fastest ever raise on our portfolio company Crowdcube, raising $1.2m in 77 seconds.
We are delighted to be joining the crowd and investing a further $7.5 million to support in this series A.* This round will be used to continue the growth of the engineering team, accelerate product rollout, expand to European markets and invest in customer growth.
We look forward to working with the team as they scale across Europe, democratizing access to investment opportunities as they go.
*Subject to FCA approval
A bit cheeky, but what are the chances of amending this description to include Freetrade :freetrade: @Freetrade_Team?
12 Likes
Thatās a very nice idea 
Watch this spaceā¦
6 Likes
To those who havenāt read this - repost:
Now onto building more and growing and Series B 
Donāt pivot to a video chat @Ian @Viktor @adam #PiedPiper
3 Likes
Crunchbase is already up to date 
Freetrade - Crunchbase Company Profile & Funding @Viktor
How to raise money from VCs 
:
2 Likes
Why R4 is being called as Seried A when it was on different valuation and FT team was very adamant to call it a separate round and not to merge with R5 even for reward???
1 Like
Itās just a tidier announcementā¦
I think itās pretty clean classifying the rounds as a seed round, seed plus and this yearās the big series A. They used the same pack & video for both CrowdCube rounds following the Crowdcube error and the VC EIS fund was mentioned in the 2nd CrowdCube roundā¦
Onwards to European expansion and toward a future Ā£100m+ valuation! Congrats all! 
5 Likes
Now that series A is done, there going to be any crowdfunding next year? donāt know what the regulations are.
Given the impending global economic doom Iād be looking to do a big Series B (Ā£20-30m raise at a Ā£100-150m valuation) next summer. 
Would be nice to add crowdfunding to the round if possible!!
100 million? I will comfortably say 500 million plus in 3-5 yrs and if they grow well North America you are easily looking at a billionā:crazy_face:
@littlefinger Do companies normally go back to the crowd once they have a Series A backer? I thought that was usually that as far as us wee financiers go. 1 or 2 million would be considered small fry when Freetrade will probably need tens of millions going forward. Iād imagine in 12-18 months they will want to be securing 20million minimum and that will come from a Series B?
1 Like
Monzo did even during Series E, albeit it was only about a fifth of that round offered to the public.
Ah thanks. Freetrade has 12 million total EIS I think like all companies and theyāve done 7.5. So that is still 4.5million left.
Why is everyone always clamouring for the next raise straight after weāve had one? Iād much rather see some organic growth first
24 Likes
Whilst I agree with the sentiment. Fundraising takes a significant amount of time. And no company wants to run out of cash.
Hi Adam !
Is that letter still planned for this week ?
I canāt wait to read your thoughts on the matter ! And I guess I am not the only one
Many thanks 
6 Likes
Bump as reminder to keep pledge of update this week
1 Like
Adam is writing the letter right now. We are looking to post it on the forum in the next few days, and turn it into an AMA.
Sorry for the delay!
11 Likes