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Name: OFF3R
Industry/sector: Investment
Date founded: 2015
Founders: Lex Deak
Location: London
Some $1.1bn was invested in tech ventures through equity crowdfunding platforms in 2015, a trend which is set to spike sevenfold to $8.2bn by 2020 – and it is Britain which is responsible for the surge of interest in the funding method.
One of the startups taking the nation by storm is OFF3R, which has seen investors offload an average of $3,000 via the platform in August 2015, with $22m raised across UK equity crowdfunding platforms that are linked to it. In its first eight weeks since launching, the app has had 250,000 interactions.
Initially named Tendr, the app uses a similar approach to Tinder’s dating app of swipe right to like or swipe left to pass and applied it to UK equity crowdfunding deals.
The aggregator app pulls in campaign content from multiple equity crowdfunding platforms at launch, including Crowdcube, Seedrs, Angels Den, Crowdfunder and Funding Tree, letting investors maximise their exposure to businesses they might want to back within a single interface.
As such, it offers a tweakable one-stop-shop for scanning multiple UK equity crowdfunding investment opportunities.
From Dragons’ Den pitch to becoming a renowned entrepreneur, founder Lex Deak’s platform started off being only usable for those living in the UK. Thanks to the market for equity crowdfunding deals in the US becoming more open with Regulation A+ of the JOBS Act, the company plans to expand further afield.
Its rebrand from tendr to OFF3R was part of its global expansion plans to the US, with £480,000 investment from New Look founder Tom Singh and serial investor Daniel McPherson being used to update its mobile product, web interface, and a free data portal for its user community.
As the company continues growing, Deak plans to include a wider variety of alternative services, such as loans and property deals. He’s also working on including tailored content for users in relation to their investment preferences.
By Shané Schutte</a ></em ></p >
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