Less than one year after launch, Bux has reached 200.000 user and announces 1.7 million euro investment round. Lead investor is international investment fund Initial Capital.
Bux started in October 2014 as an daring blend of virtual and real investing: people can join investing with virtual money and graduate to investing with real money. Most of the established financial companies are trying to downplay the gambling side of the stock market. Bux goes against this trend by trying to make financial markets accessible for everyone.
Shukri Shammas, founder and investor of Initial Capital, explained in the press release that his decision to invest is based on the team: “To apply gamification in financial markets is not easy. You need to build a unique team, containing both game specialists and people with financial experience. Bux succeeded in making such a team”. The portfolio of Initial Games consists mostly of European game studios and app companies.
Two other investors have participated in this round: Velocity Growth Capital and 5Square. 5Square surprisingly is a sustainable investor, not normally involved in gambling-related companies (previous investments include edtech startup Snappet, banking backoffice 5degrees and more traditional businesses). Orange Growth Capital invested in an earlier round and has a portfolio of FinTech investments.
One of the key success metrics for the Bux team is the number of users without earlier investment experience. In March of this year this was 76%, and the number has now increased to 79%. For CEO Nick Bortot and his team this is proof that they are succeeding to make a new group of people excited about investing.