Aufort raised €235,000 in its 2nd financing round using Ignium.

17 Nov 2021

Reimo

1

We are proud to announce that Aufort has finished their community based financing round in cooperation with Ignium.

Aufort proved that companies can successfully  raise money directly from their customers, without any intermediaries.

Using Ignium, Aufort was able to connect Ignium’s blockchain securities infrastructure to their websites, social media and other online activities where they connect with their customers.

 

Reimo Hammerberg Ignium CEO “This is the first disintermediated community based financing that has been conducted with 100% usage of Ignium blockchain-securities infrastructure! We are pleased Aufort became the early adopter for this new type of market. The Ignium team congratulates Aufort with a successful round ending and getting a new level of loyalty with their customers. The Aufort campaign gives a very first insight to all the SME’s, they can raise money directly from their community without intermediaries and thus making the process way faster and cheaper for SMEs. It redefines arranging of capital raising”, added Reimo Hammerberg, Ignium CEO


Let’s take a deeper look at why Aufort succeeded with the financing round and how other companies can join the experiment and benefit from looking forward to its experience.


Who is Aufort?

Aufort is an Estonian company with almost 8 years of experience in selling investment gold and silver in Estonia. With the goal of expanding globally, Aufort is developing the most transparent and easy-to-use platform, which allows gold to be used in several different ways. Aufort’s vision is to become the next-generation gold bank.

Aufort has developed a unique digital product solution, Aufort: physical investment gold in a digital form that is working on an easy-to-use e-shop platform. Aufort allows you to invest in physical gold in digital form cheaper, securely, and more conveniently without leaving home.

Why did Aufort choose Ignium instead of traditional crowdfunding platforms?

 Looking across all of the options, there are 4 main reasons why Aufort chose Ignium compared to traditional funding options.

Lower costs

The current capital markets infrastructure is owned and controlled by the banks, who choose and define by setting fee-structure, who get into the market. Most crowdfunding platforms charge a platform fee that’s a percentage of the money raised in addition to charging a payment processing fee of from 3 to 8%  on average on some platforms up to 18% plus about $0.30 per transaction.

With Ignium, SMEs can onboard investors  seamlessly across the globe through their own website, social media or other gateway without any intermediaries and associated costs.

As companies raise money from their own community and thus acting as campaign managers, Ignium does not charge any transaction fee.

Speed

Aufort  came to conclude that to start  fundraising  on crowdfunding  platforms  will take at least several months to prepare the campaign. Raising money from the community with help of Ignium infrastructure took significantly less time from the start  of the process until the conclusion.

Less paper-work and more time for investomer relations  

Aufort could rely on Ignium infrastructure to issue convertible bonds and could focus their entire time and energy where it should be  – on customers and community. Issuance of securities as well as settlement of transactions was seamless and instantaneous.

Seamless onboarding of investors across borders

Ignium enabled seamless and compliant onboarding of investors from different jurisdictions. Ignium infrastructure connects companies and investors directly without the need for intermediaries, thus making the onboarding of investors across the globe a fast and seamless process.

Cost and efforts spent 

Overall the total  financing round has been live for 3 weeks.
The main task and time spent for the Aufort has been to enable their community and  let them know that they can join the company not only as customers but also as investors.

To engage with the community, the Aufort  team has developed  the marketing plan. Running the marketing activities along with an email campaign  and widget installed on the Aufort website has put a start to a successful financing round and transformed their customers into investomers.

From customer to Investomer

Financing round results

Financing round summary:

▪️ 3 weeks duration
▪️ 
105 investors
▪️ 
€235,000 raised
▪️ 
Round conducted through project’s own website and social media
▪️
0% transaction fees

Why was Ignium the perfect choice for Aufort to raise their round:

Aufort successfully raised their round on Ignium because their company profile was a perfect fit for this type of fundraising vehicle.

Smaller companies with loyal customers are the prime choice for community fundraising because it gives you tools to motivate your brand ambassadors while growing your business.

In our experience companies that have some or most of the points below have the best chances of being successful with a community based fundraising:

▪️ Small or Medium Businesses, often micro businesses with 1 -10 employees;
▪️ Retail facing;
▪️
Have already been in business for a few years and have an existing customer base;
▪️
Have an active community managed through social media or otherwise;

Infrastructure integration  & securities issuing

To get started with their financing round Aufort simply plugged Ignium’s blockchain-securities infrastructure to their website and social media and with the click of the button their loyal clients and community could become investomers. The Ignium team provided support on all steps of infrastructure integration.

Ignium took care of:

Investors onboarding

From social media  and website potential investors were  redirected to the introduction page where they were able to get familiar with project details, terms & conditions, competitors and round goals.
Aufort Landing Page

Kept investors register

Create an account on Ignium in a few clicks.
Kept investors register
 Compliance requirements and passing KYC verification by investors and companies

Pass the KYC verification. Ignium stores the KYC data.

Arranged payment settlement
Almost there. Place the number of  bonds to purchase  or  the investment amount, transfer the funds and Ignium handled the immediate settlement.

Company Page

 Securities issuance
Receive an Email notification when securities are issued. Check or trade them directly from the Securities dashboard

Securities issuing

And this is not over. As Aufort remains plugged in to Ignium for the secondary market as well, whenever they need more funding, they would open the tap and turn to the community. 

Bert-Ken Raudberg Founder & CEO @ Aufort“Recently we finished our 2nd funding round and raised 235k from 105 retail investors. We are very proud because we raised money directly from our community, not through a crowdfunding platform that has thousands of users.
As the 1st private round was organised fully by ourselves, we are thankful for Ignium who supported us with their infrastructure that made the process much easier and professional.” – Bert-Ken Raudberg, founder and CEO of Aufort

Summary picture
Are you involved with SME’s or any other business that is considering fundraising?

Contact Ignium and enable the fundraising with help of your own community, turning them from customers to investomers.

Reach out to us: [email protected]

 

About Author

Reimo Hammerberg
CEO & Co-founder

Reimo has worked for close to 20 years at law firm Sorainen as a capital markets and financial services attorney and last 13 years as partner and head of the practice. He has advised numerous capital markets transactions, projects related to regulated entities, licensing, including advising capital markets infrastructure (stock-exchanges, CSDs) operators as well as technology start-ups acting in the space of financial services. Reimo is a board member at Finance Estonia (industry organisation for financial sector in Estonia) and heads blockchain related sub-group in FinTech group.

Post Category

Recented Post