Munich Startup: What does your startup do? What problem are you solving?
Sophie Thurner, Beatvest: Beatvest offers its users a beginner-friendly investment environment structured in two stages: education and investing.
In today’s world, it is more important than ever to engage with personal finances: the challenging inflation situation in everyday life and the growing pension gap weigh heavily on the shoulders of younger generations. Beatvest’s vision is to give young people the opportunity to educate themselves on capital market topics, make fact-based decisions, and build wealth in the long term through capital market investments. In this way, financial education is made available to a broad audience and tailored to users with the latest information technology.
How to invest? And in what?
But that already exists, doesn’t it?
On one hand, there are pure trading platforms like brokers. They offer a solution for users who already know where they want to invest and how investing works. We start one step earlier. We help users with the question: what type of investment should I actually invest in and how do I go about it? For the vast majority of capital market beginners, the real problem is transferring what they’ve learned through books or videos into actually executing the investment. This is exactly where Beatvest comes in.
What’s your founding story?
We met during a surf vacation on Fuerteventura. We don’t just share a passion for our startup, but also for waves and water. While I had already been active on the capital market for over 15 years at the time we met and was a seasoned professional through my job at the British financial market authority, tech startup expert Julia was just beginning to engage with the subject. We talked for hours about the hurdles that investment beginners face. And we discussed solutions for how we could open the capital market to the broader public and make it a fairer and better place.
We both quickly realized: something truly great could come from this – ‘Finance meets Tech and goes Startup’.
Beatvest: Making the capital market fairer
What have been your biggest challenges so far?
Initially, we faced the challenge of finding the optimal balance between “learning” and “applying what you’ve learned.” Collaboration with financial experts, industry insiders, and educational institutions like universities and schools shed light on this and helped us overcome this hurdle. We also received valuable support through our “Sounding Board.” This is a group of 100 users who actively supported us with feedback during app development and helped us build the product together.
How is business going?
Just before Christmas, we were delighted to see our app released on the Apple App Store. Since then, several thousand users have downloaded our app and are now actively engaging with their personal financial situation. A result that makes us very proud and happy. Nevertheless, we continue to work at full capacity to improve the app and provide our users with an even better experience.
Munich is very attractive
How have you experienced Munich as a startup location so far?
We find Munich to be a very attractive location for our young company. In particular, the large number of top-tier universities creates a fantastic interplay of entrepreneurship, research, and exchange. For example, we have already collaborated with the TU München on several projects. We were always very impressed by the expertise and drive of the students and university staff.
Hidden champion or shooting star?
Since we published our funding round at the end of January, I would place us in the healthy middle ground between hidden champion and shooting star. The public interest we’ve gained as a result has brought us many new users. We’re both also very active on LinkedIn so our users always have updates on what we’re working on and who’s behind the Beatvest product.
