{"id":45035,"date":"2023-10-20T15:40:34","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:40:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/simply-wall-sts-nick-van-den-berg-stirs-up-investor-interest-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:40:34","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:40:34","slug":"simply-wall-sts-nick-van-den-berg-stirs-up-investor-interest-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/simply-wall-sts-nick-van-den-berg-stirs-up-investor-interest-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Simply Wall St\u2019s Nick van den Berg stirs up investor interest – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The secret to successfully closing an investment round is coffee, according to Simply Wall St co-founder Nick van den Berg.<\/p>\n

Meeting with investors face-to-face in a cafe, he says, helps both parties get to know each other and ensure they\u2019re both on the same page.<\/p>\n

It worked for Simply Wall St, with the fintech startup recently securing a $600,000 investment round and a partnership with National Australia Bank.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the funding process is about meeting people,\u201d van den Berg says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe weren\u2019t just looking for money but for investors that can help grow the business.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth parties really want to get to know each other and you can\u2019t do that by hiding behind business plans and investment memorandums.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team presented \u201cat least 80\u201d pitches before bringing on board lead investor Mike Quinn from Innovation Capital, who invested as an individual.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo get to that point takes quite a lot of time, and I think that has a bit to do with the fragmented nature of startup investing in Australia,\u201d van den Berg says.<\/p>\n

Simply Wall St closed the funding round on the back of signing a partnership with NAB that will involve the startup\u2019s flagship service Snowflake<\/a>, which graphically visualises live stock data, appearing on the bank\u2019s website.<\/p>\n

The capital injection will go towards \u201ctaking the company to the next level\u201d by monetising the online app and launching a native app in the next three months.<\/p>\n

It brings the total investments in Simply Wall St to $700,000 after it received a $100,000 boost as part of an accelerator program run by AWI Ventures<\/a> last year.<\/p>\n

Although playing coy with what valuation was placed on the company, van den Berg says the round was oversubscribed by $100,000, and the co-founders didn\u2019t come close to giving away more than 20% equity.<\/p>\n

Van den Berg and co-founder Al Bentley will soon be appearing at the Fintech Week in London with the aim of meeting with potential investors and partners, and getting a feel for the fintech startup scene internationally.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis will assist our thought process in what sort of representation Simply Wall St needs in either, or both, of these place,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The platform now has over 11,000 users, a sharp rise from less than 4000 at the end of last year. It produces over 9000 infographics each day, and now the startup is looking to monetise these large numbers.<\/p>\n

Van den Berg says they\u2019re working on a range of \u201cessential features\u201d that\u2019ll hopefully convert some of these free users into \u201cpower users\u201d paying a monthly subscription fee, as the app emerges from beta soon.<\/p>\n

But he stresses that there will also be a free version of the service to all users, and all feedback is being taken on board.<\/p>\n

\u201cOften one of the issues when building an app or a product is that people don\u2019t let you know what they think,\u201d he says. \u201cOur users have been fantastic in requesting what sort of features they would like to see and it has definitely influenced our development roadmap for the better.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the most rewarding parts of the startup\u2019s success, van den Berg says, is seeing the wide range of people that are benefitting from its services.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been really interesting seeing the cross-section of our users \u2013 anything from a Gen Y investor that hasn\u2019t bought a stock before through to an 80 year old ex-stock broker that uses it every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Raising your<\/i> first round of capital<\/i><\/a>? Starting a<\/i> crowdfunding campaign<\/i><\/a>? Want to grow your business<\/i> with Instagram?<\/i><\/a> StartupSmart School can help.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The secret to successfully closing an investment round is coffee, according to Simply Wall St co-founder Nick van den Berg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58948,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,25,11,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45035"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}