Seed round icing on Cake
GOLD COAST start-up Cake has raised $1 million to further its mission of bringing antiquated equity management systems into the 21st Century.
The company, led by CEO Jason Atkins, was founded in 2017 as a SaaS (software as a service) firm to help small-tomedium size enterprises raise capital quickly, manage investors efficiently and improve the ease in which a company distributes its shares. his bit to help current students who were looking to progress their business ideas.
“Universities are great and you learn a lot there, but there are also students who are a bit entrepreneurial in their nature … being able to support those students who have those ideas and ambitions is fantastic. I definitely support that, especially given
The platform now services more than 100 companies and 6000 investors.
Mr Atkins said the successful seed round with Industria Capital was due to the organic growth it had achieved over the past two years and provides access to a collective of industry leaders.
“We are lucky in that key figures within the Australian investment scene immediately grasp how Cake fits within the my own journey,” he said.
“There are a lot of things I’ve seen when businesses fail or when they’re trying to get off the ground, and hopefully my experiences can assist students in some capacity. For example, have they thought about how they are going to structure their venture, how are they going to mobilise and commercialise capital raising ecosystem and the problems it is solving,” Mr Atkins said. “We partnered with Industria Capital to engage professional and high-net worth individuals and family offices who inherently understand the need to simplify arrangements in this space. This support complements the 30 partnerships we’ve established with national brands including Wholesale Investors, CRIISP, Lawpath and accounting firm their idea, what are the next steps forwards, do they need funding, what is the marketing plan and go-to-market strategy, etc.”
He said while the COVID-19 environment was challenging for start-ups, several successful companies, such as Airbnb, Square and Uber, emerged from the global financial crisis of 2008.
Carbon Group, whose founder Jamie Davison liked the concept so much he joined us as CFO.”
The seed round attracted the attention of Alan Tsen, who is the head of FinTech Australia and has come on board as an investor.
Mr Tsen said the current methods of managing share registries was an often antiquated and broken process.
“I love the mission Cake is
“There’s a lot of challenges but there’s a lot of opportunities as well.
“Students, entrepreneurs, or people in general, just need to have the conviction to go after it, to take the risk and give it a go, it might work or it might not … whatever the outcome, there’s always points of learning you can take out of it.” on, as the way share registries are managed is still mainly through spreadsheet and physical documents – it really is an antiquated and broken process,” Mr Tsen said.
“In a time when ‘software is eating the world’, software is still just nibbling away at share registries. The approach Cake is taking in rebuilding the ownership infrastructure of a company, through their software, has the potential to make the lives of the average business owner magnitudes of order better.”
The capital markets industry in Australian is dominated by large incumbents such as ASX, Computershare and Link. New entrants have emerged in Australia and overseas, however, such as Automic, with Carta in the US recently completing a $US300m Series E raise led by Andreessen Horowitz.