If you are a founder looking to grow your start-up, there is currently one mainstream model of funding it: selling equity. It’s a model that has of course produced iconic companies, but has also excluded 90% because they don’t fit often restrictive criteria. At ArK we are opening up the largest capital pool in the world (the credit market) to the tech community, by bridging the gap between how risk is assessed by a bank and how risk is assessed by modern tech companies.
When a company onboards to ArK, they plug in all data sources relating to their growth, and through machine learning we unlock their unique “growth DNA”, from which we can predict a 5-year future. This prediction allows us to issue transformative financial products like our growth loan, stretching up to 7 with repayments starting at year 3. We also let them keep our machine learning platform as a growth device.
How did you come up with the idea for the company?
After 5 years of pioneering how to build modern analytics-driven companies at Spotify and the effect that can have on growth pace. I then took the same approach to create a top tier VC fund through a machine learning driven approach, and started to see an even bigger opportunity. There is an enormous number of founders building great companies, which could grow much faster with access to our Spotify-grade analytics platforms from day 1, as well as if they had access to VC-grade funding early on. I then realized that these two are really the same thing. What’s more, if a platform like this existed, many many more founders could grow much faster than they can today.
My co-founders – six-time entrepreneur Oliver Hildebrandt and veteran banker Axel Bruzelius, identified the same potential in their respective walks of life. Together we created ArK with the ambition to become the centre of gravity for growth financing in the tech arena.
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How has the company evolved over the last couple of years?
Well, it’s been 9 months, starting with me, my two co-founders and a few freelancers building out the first prototype with which to fundraise. 4 months later, we have managed to raise one of the biggest seed rounds in European history at €165m. Since then, we’ve also ramped up an incredible seed team, issued our first cohort of loans, and made our first revenues – all important milestones.
One thing that delights me personally, is the reaction from founders when they unlock the 5-year prediction for what they’ve built. We’ve also had founders ask to invite their VC’s to the analytics platform, and had VCs ask to deploy the platform for their portfolio companies.
What can we hope to see from ArK Kapital in the future?
You can expect to see our model for how to grow companies become mainstream, further global expansion, and for our analytics platform to become the established name when it comes to growth predictions in tech.
