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Berlin, Germany — July 26, 2022 — bunch, a tech platform enabling investors to syndicate deals across private markets has raised a €7.3 million seed round led by European early-stage fund Cherry Ventures. embedded/capital, who led bunch’s previously undisclosed pre-seed round, also participated. With their beta already live in Germany and the Netherlands, bunch will steer the fresh capital towards expanding across additional geographies and asset classes. Also, the team will continue to advance the technical and product development of its holistic software platform to make it easier for all investors to participate in private markets.
The round is complemented by a number of angel investors such as founders of European fintechs like Adyen, Klarna, Juni, and Moonfare as well as private market investment and fintech experts such as Cristina Stenbeck (lead shareholder at Kinnevik, chairperson of the Zalando Supervisory Board and non-executive director of Spotify), Pip Klöckner (investment influencer & Host at Doppelgänger Tech Talk), and Jan Deepen’s Discovery Ventures. As a testament to their offering, some of bunch’s first customers are also joining the round as angel investors.
As technology has reshaped many aspects of financial services, the explosion of private market investment activity has not been accompanied by any progress on how investments into private assets are made and managed. bunch was started out of frustration from this by founders Enrico Ohnemüller and Levent Altunel in late 2021. Enrico’s prior experiences at finleap, the fintech company builder, as well as Goldman Sachs made him acutely aware of the significant barriers involved in accessing private markets. Levent worked for Citigroup and Roland Berger before becoming an early-stage investor for a Berlin-based VC fund, where he experienced the difficulty of setting up investment entities first-hand. He is also a founding member of 2Hearts, a non-profit association promoting diversity in the European tech landscape.
bunch’s initial offering is a digital platform where investors can create their own investment syndicates and track all their investments in one place. Over the last three months, they have transacted close to €150 million of assets under admin across startup investments and funds.
“Investors have been waiting for a solution like this that takes away all the admin work of investing and helps investors to become more professional at the same time” says Levent, who also highlights that first users have also joined as investors in this funding round. Enrico adds: “We are giving our customers access to a toolset that previously was only available for the largest private investors, including pro-rata monetisation protecting dilution on your winners and risk diversification through collective investing. We are building on top of larger tech organizations for scalability which allows us to focus on customer value and process flexibility from day one.”
While private market investments have exploded over the last decade with almost $10 trillion in assets under management according to McKinsey, the value creation was limited to only those with access to opportunities and large amounts of capital. Individual investors have been struggling to participate in this growth in an easy way. bunch helps remove the barriers of investing collectively which diversifies risk and democratizes the access to unique investment opportunities.
Filip Dames, Founding Partner at Cherry Ventures says: “The bunch team, led by Levent and Enrico, is unlocking private markets for investing with, first, their one-stop-shop solution — the bunch OS. We know how cumbersome gaining access to these markets can be, so we were immediately impressed when we witnessed bunch’s streamlined, simple solution. We believe that this tool is the first step on the journey to provide liquidity to private markets and become a true operating system for investors. We’re thrilled that this round will further revolutionize how all private market stakeholders — be it founders and funders — invest, interact, and exchange.”
Ramin Niroumand, Managing Partner at embedded/capital says: "We know from our experience as founders, operators and investors that private markets are far from digitized, with limited liquidity and fragmented access contributing to a generally painful process for all market participants. When we first started our conversations with Enrico and Levent last year, we collectively saw the potential of building on existing fintech infrastructure to launch a holistic suite of financial products across jurisdictions and assets - the bunch OS - to transform the way we interact with private markets. We are thrilled to be part of bunch's journey from the very beginning, as well as happy customers.”
About bunch
bunch is building the OS for private market investing. The bunch OS is an asset & jurisdiction agnostic investment platform, enabling investors to set up and manage their investment entities in a seamless way while at the same time offering investors more professional tools. The bunch OS is currently in public beta.
bunch was founded in 2021 by Enrico Ohnemüller & Levent Altunel. The team has previously worked across public & private market investments and has extensive experience with building fintech companies. The team is now applying its experience to build the tools they deeply missed in their previous jobs.
Contact: hi@bunch.capital
Learn more -> www.bunch.capital
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About Cherry Ventures
Cherry Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm led by a team of entrepreneurs with experience building fast-scaling companies such as Zalando and Spotify. The firm backs Europe's boldest founders, usually as their first institutional investor, and supports them in everything from their go-to-market strategy and the scaling of their businesses. Cherry Ventures has previously invested in the seed stage of over 90 companies across Europe, including FlixBus, Auto1 Group, Flaschenpost, Infarm, Rows, Forto, SellerX, Juni, and Flink. Cherry Ventures is based in Berlin and invests across Europe with operations in London and Stockholm. cherry.vc
About embedded/capital
embedded/capital is an early-stage fintech venture capital firm based in Berlin. Founded by the European fintech pioneers from finleap, the firm couples deep domain and operational expertise with an unparalleled financial services network. embedded/capital is backed by globally recognized tech entrepreneurs, industry veterans as well as leading institutional and venture investors.
