Meet Ifty Nasir, Founder and CEO at ShareTech Platform: Vestd

Ifty Nasir is founder and CEO of sharetech platform, Vestd. As a passionate advocate for the Ownership Effect – the principle that sharing equity boosts team motivation and productivity – he launched Vestd, with the aim to help businesses simplify equity management and introduce share schemes for all.

 

Tell us about Vestd

 

Vestd is a sharetech platform and this basically means that we help businesses to manage their share schemes and equity. We support businesses of all sizes, from startups and scaleups, to SME and enterprise level organisations – many of whom have previously found it difficult to give a stake to their teams or investors because of the red tape or costs involved. But through our platform, Vestd has opened the door to growth for many entrepreneurs.

The platform enables founders to give their team shares through a range of schemes, including Enterprise Management Incentives (EMI), growth shares and unapproved share options. The platform also has features and products to support early-stage companies including SEIS and EIS advance assurance.

Recently, we expanded our offering with a new investment management platform, InVestd, which aims to simplify VC fundraising for startups and scaleups.

 

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 

In my earlier career I reached the most senior levels at BP and Essar Energy, but with a growing family and need for a better work-life balance outside of the corporate world, I founded Vestd with my nephew; After seeing an opportunity to help businesses manage equity and unlock growth through equity sharing.

I’m a strong believer in the ‘Ownership Effect’ so I wanted to create a business that reflected and aligned with that, as I think better businesses are built when all those helping to build them are truly invested in their success. In demonstration of this, Vestd data shows that 95% of its customers say employee ownership has actively helped to improve employee loyalty, and more than 90% reported that a share scheme had helped their company to grow.

Starting as the first and the only regulated sharetech platform, Vestd now supports other entrepreneurs like myself by facilitating and guiding businesses in managing and sharing equity to incentivise teams.

 

 

What is your advice to aspiring entrepreneurs?

 

Be as helpful as humanly possible. Produce educational resources customers and prospects will actually find useful. Think about the value you bring to the market, what problems your product or service solves and then prove it. Collect and share testimonials from customers and listen to their feedback in earnest to improve your offering over time.

 

What most excites you about Vestd?

 

We’ve empowered businesses to align, motivate and reward teams with equity, which we believe will directly lead to more strong startups in the future. It’s a game-changer for all sectors.

We have calculated that if 100,000 companies were to share equity with their teams, it could generate a £1 billion boost for the economy. This is something we hope to facilitate, growing an equity-driven economy where more businesses can thrive.

 

How has the company evolved over the last couple of years?

 

At Vestd, we’ve spent the last decade creating a best-in-class equity management platform, and now we’re proud to offer a complete sharetech offering – helping founders to launch, raise investment, grow, mature and then cash in on their success, along with their teams.

This involved developing Vestd into the best fully digital platform possible for our customers, in addition to introducing our new investment management platform, InVestd Raise, to simplify VC fundraising for startups and scaleups.

We also launched ‘FounderMetrics’ during this time, our top thirty podcast sharing insights and inspiration from remarkable founders, which is available on Spotify and Apple Music.

 

What can we hope to see from Vestd in the future?

 

We’re on a mission to increase equity inclusion and will be further developing our product and team, to make it as easy as possible for founders to manage equity and motivate their teams with shares.

In growing our team we will be able to continually develop our platform with new, great and creative ideas to bolster its efficacy and accessibility. After all, the driving force of Vestd is to allow businesses of all kinds to gain access to the world of equity management and share schemes, so for us to develop in this way is a given.

We intend to become the ‘household name’ when it comes to equity management, but more than that we want to inspire founders and entrepreneurs to believe that sharing a slice of the action with your staff when it comes to business is a standard feature of employment.

We have some more exciting news in the pipeline, which will further our goal of sharing equity to all, so stay tuned to hear more about that in the coming weeks!