Democratizing Venture Capital With the Help of Blockchain Technology

Cashlink: Hello Lennard! We are happy to have you as our guest today. With inVenture, Alexander, Samuel and you have the goal to democratize venture capital. For those who don’t know you – would you like to introduce your startup to the readers?

Lennard Fischer: I’d love to. First of all, thank you very much for the invitation! By using blockchain technology and a self-developed investment platform, inVenture opens up access to venture capital funds for private investors, who then invest in selected startups with high growth potential. Venture capital funds offer an attractive risk-return profile and an additional opportunity for diversification. In Germany, however, investments in such funds are only accessible to the very wealthy and to institutional investors, and not to private investors – we want to change that now. 

Cashlink: Sounds super interesting! Was it your own desire as a private investor to invest in venture capital funds or where did the idea for the startup come from? 

Lennard Fischer: Definitely! Alexander and I have known each other since the beginning of our bachelor studies and had a very early strong interest in different financial products.That’s also when we gained our practical experience working with venture capital and startups. Impressed by this environment, we asked ourselves at some point the following question – can we as private investors also invest in these venture capital funds? Quite quickly, however, we came to the conclusion that this asset class is inaccessible for us private investors. After a lot of research and discussions with venture capital funds and our network, we found a solution. This ultimately led us to meeting Samuel and eventually founding inVenture together. 

Cashlink: The response to your startup shows that it wasn’t just you guys who saw this problem. Since the beginning of 2021, inVenture has received funding from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, and the European Social Fund, as part of the EXIST program. How has this helped your startup?

Lennard Fischer: The EXIST Business Startup Grant has helped us enormously. FinTechs in particular, which are heavily regulated by lawmakers, are faced with high initial costs. Thanks to startup grant, we are financially secured for the time being and, among other things, have the opportunity to cover a large part of these setup costs. Since we cooperate with the Humboldt University of Berlin because of the EXIST grant, we‘re currently operating from the HU startup incubator with a few selected startups. Interacting with other teams and the support of the startup advisors help us with a wide variety of founding-related topics. 

Cashlink: How did you come to incorporate blockchain technology into your solution and is it helping you?

Lennard Fischer: During our research, we came across asset tokenization and saw that the blockchain disruption of various areas in the financial industry was already in full swing – and for a good reason. For financial assets, blockchain is the technology of the future. It reduces expensive administrative costs, speeds up transactions for illiquid assets, and is even more transparent than traditional applications. 

Cashlink: And there are even more benefits – but now that you have introduced your connection to blockchain technology, we can also finally announce our joint partnership. How does Cashlink complement your product?

Lennard Fischer: Issuing digital securities involves a lot of regulatory requirements. We rely on Cashlink’s Blockchain-as-a-Service solution to create securities, manage them, and stay compliant with the regulatory framework. Furthermore, blockchain technology is still in its early stages. New blockchains that reduce costs or offer interesting additions are already being developed. We as inVenture want to stay flexible, and therefore, we rely on Cashlink as a strong partner. Cashlink is continuously adapting to new environmental conditions and offers us a consistent access point to the most important blockchains. In doing so, we can focus on our core mission.

Cashlink: We’re super excited to work with you guys and think that you’ll bring a great product to market! Last but not least, an outlook into the future: Where do you see inVenture in 5 years?

Lennard Fischer: Very exciting question! Blockchain is leading to a structural change in many industries and is being adapted more and more. We believe that the blockchain infrastructure in particular will continue to develop rapidly, which of course makes us very optimistic about the future. In five years, we will hopefully have made the asset class accessible to private investors beyond Germany’s borders and will be able to cooperate with a large number of renowned venture capital funds as well as emerging ones with various investment focuses. As a small teaser – in August we will go live with our investment platform and present a very exciting early-stage venture capital fund. If you want to join our journey and stay updated on inVenture, be sure to join the waiting list via our website.

Cashlink: Well, we’ll keep our fingers crossed for you guys. Good luck for the future and thank you for the interview!