In the wake of presenting our advisory board of former executives from Google, Amazon and NASA we are expanding our board of directors and are closing a $6.5m Series-A financing round.
Today we closed a $6.5 million Series-A round of funding led by Eduardo Saverin, co-founder of Facebook and private investor. Saverin, currently residing in Singapore, will become actively involved in Jumio’s roll out into the Asian market and joins our board of directors. “I’m usually a critical person,” says Eduardo Saverin, “but the last time I have seen such a disruptive idea was actually Facebook.”
“We are excited to work with Eduardo,” says Daniel Mattes, founder and CEO of Jumio. “It’s amazing how many luminaries are fascinated by our project. The way online and mobile payments are handled today are practically outdated. There is a lot of space for innovation, and our mission is to make online and mobile payments as simple and secure as a handshake.”
We chose an innovative way of financing. Instead of raising a regular Series-A round with an institutional Venture Capital fund, the company decided to create a Special Purpose Entity (“SPE”). A participation in Jumio was placed privately to Ultra High Net Worth Individuals (“Ultra HNWI”) in form of a private placement. The use of SPE is very rare amongst start-up companies, but has become popular lately from Facebook’s deal with Goldman Sachs.
Daniel explains the advantages. “There is a lot of interest from high net worth individuals to participate in start-up success stories like Facebook, Twitter, Zynga or Groupon. We offered the market such an opportunity and it was received extremely well to the extent that we were over-subscribed.”
And most importantly: We will launch our product soon.
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