Neufund, a European Fintech startup with “a mission to open the world of finance: create new markets and bring together assets, investors, and entrepreneurs,” recently shared its product update for January 2021.
Neufund noted that their professional team has just returned from “a well-deserved” break, and even though last month seemed short, they’ve released several updates to their line of products including improvements for their presale sign-up process and have completed WalletConnect integration.
Neufund’s management stated:
“We’ve worked on improving the priority list user journey and the wording of the flow to make it more clear. We’ve also improved the priority list components, now it’s easy to access and fill by the users, who want to participate in the presale.”
Neufund’s management further noted that they’ve decided to rewrite a lot of product microcopy. The Fintech firm noted that this “guides the user better and puts emphasis on the important, not overwhelming the user.” They also mentioned that in the business account verification flow, the address input has been made a required field, instead of optional.
Additionally, the Neufund product team has made updates to their components library to make sure that frontend development “goes smoothly and all the design elements are aligned throughout the platform.” They’ve also integrated the WalletConnect stable version on their platform, it’s out of BETA and “into the spotlight,” the company confirmed.
Neufund announced in late January 2021 that they’re expanding their team of professionals. The company stated that they will fill vacancies and create new roles that will help them “fire on all cylinders.” Neufund is looking for a full-stack software engineer and an operations and risk management specialist (more details here).
Last month, Neufund also explained how they simply the fundraising process by automating documents.
They company noted:
“Drafting and finalizing fundraising documents, like prospectus, may cost up to 100.000 EUR, and the negotiation of the agreement sent by investors’ lawyers may take months. (Pretty frustrating, huh?).”
Neufund also mentioned that they have a “fully-automated” process, which lets users prepare customized documents based on information they provide on the platform: the Token Holder Agreement, Reservation and Acquisition Agreement, and Term Sheet.
There’s also a “partly-automated” process, which means documents are “adapted to your company’s needs and/or your lawyer’s advice: Prospectus, Investor and Shareholder’s Agreements” (more details here).
Neufund, once a leading voice in the European security token offering market, decided in mid-2020 to pivot away from its digital security mission.
Based in Germany, Neufund was founded by CEO Zoe Adamovicz who announced several years ago their intent to conduct the first-ever legally binding offering of tokenized equity on Blockchain. Neufund accomplished this goal by distributing equity in its parent company, Fifth Force GmbH.
Neufund had stated last year that “change is coming.” Neufund, a primary issuance platform that also sought to enable issuers to manage digital securities, had frozen all fundraising campaigns. The company had stated in June 2020:
“The barriers built by regulators reinforced with the lack of dialog, especially during the current economic and social situation made us review our product roadmap and the platform’s future. There is no reason to wait for the new ‘normal’ in order to change course. Today we announce that we’ve decided to pivot, put aside our Equity Token Offering project, and pause upcoming fundraising campaigns. We are committed to dedicating all our time and resources to focus on new product development. We are hopeful with the launch of our new product, that we will open new opportunities and continue bringing value to our investors and community. We are thankful for the full support from our investors, as we take this first step in a new direction.”
Adamovicz also shared more details about the company’s new business strategy with CI in an interview last year.
In December 2020, Neufund announced a new investment, and said it would pursue a financial services license. Adamovicz has also commented on these plans.