Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
Cringle, a German fintech company developing a mobile application for money transfers, has raised €800 000 from 1487 investors on the German equity crowdfunding site Companisto.
“It’s simply overwhelming! I think it’s unbelievable how much money we have raised from so many people within such a short period,” Joschka Friedag, CEO of Cringle, told the Companisto blog. “We would like to thank all of our investors very much,” he said and added that the company made a lot of effort to reach its goal. “We used all marketing channels and gave a series of interviews to show every single person that we are working hard to make our business succeed,” Freidag noted.
The company, valued at €4.1 million, was offering 8.89% of its shares and has set an investment threshold of €100 000 and a funding goal of €400 000.
The P2P payments app did really well during the campaign and was 474% overfunded in early September, roughly two months before the end of the fundraising drive. Also in September Cringle announced it has signed a €1 million “media for equity” deal with WeltN24 GmbH, a subsidiary of the German media giant Axel Springer.
Cringle was founded in 2014 with a €100 000 grant. Later in the year the company received €500 000 from an angel investor and last August got another €500 000 from debt financing.
In January 2016 already had 30 000 downloads. According to the latest data in Google Play, it has between 10 000 and 50 000 downloads on Android devices. By June the users of Cringle have transferred nearly €1 million.
The application lets users send money to the friends in their contact list, almost instantly. The recipient does not have to even install Cringle. The application is partnered with the German Deutsche Kreditbank AG and complies with German regulations. Cringle is due to launch in Austria shortly, in partnership with Solarisbank.
