Software as a Service (SaaS) company Cake Equity has partnered with innovative capital markets platform Wholesale Investor to digitise, innovate, and streamline capital raises, share registries, employee share schemes, and valuations for startups and small business.
Recent research from Wholesale Investor shows the leading problem for startups is access to investors, closely followed by lack of time and too many distractions.
The Cake platform solves these longstanding pain points for emerging, unlisted businesses – as well as the wider private markets and venture capital sector – who have traditionally relied on high cost, time intensive methods, but can now process transactions in minutes through a low-cost subscription service.
Cake Equity CEO, Jason Atkins, said growth in the startup space had been hindered for far too long due to archaic startup funding systems.
“Securing capital in an already competitive and fragmented market can be extremely difficult. Sadly, for founders the pain doesn’t end there, as it can be a very expensive, lengthy process to add investors to the registry,” Mr Atkins said.
“Our sole mission at Cake is to revolutionise and streamline this process to save time and money for our passionate founders. In fact, we want to go even further than this and give founders time back in their day, which the platform enables through improved efficiency and offering a central hub for all investor needs.”
Wholesale Investor is a minority shareholder in Cake and through its software platform CRIISP connects 30,000 investors with Cake’s unique offering.
Wholesale Investor CEO, Steve Torso, said Cake’s values aligned closely with Wholesale Investor’s ethos of empowering and connecting game-changing companies with some of the world’s smartest investors.
“With our significant network of over 13,000 companies and investor distribution to over 30,000 investors, Cake Equity is the perfect complement to our CRIISP ambitions to increase liquidity for smaller and medium-sized businesses,” Mr Torso said.
“The capital markets industry has traditionally been dominated by large incumbents, such as the ASX, Computershare, and Link, which are costly and inefficient for the startup space. This revolution has been a long time coming and the response from our investors and companies has been overwhelmingly positive.”
One major industry player who is excited about the offering is Investec Emerging Companies (IEC), who is an investor in Wholesale Investor, and provider of advice, capital, and connectivity to emerging companies with strong growth ambitions.
Investec Emerging Companies’ Karen Chan said the emerging and private markets space had been overlooked and underserviced and believed this platform would breathe new life to the sector.
“At IEC we act as a true partner and adviser to our founders and investee companies, offering tailored solutions which span capital, advice, and connectivity. Part of our job is rolling up our sleeves to connect our founders with the right investment network to take their company to the next level, and we have long felt there is a gap in the emerging space,” Ms Chan said.
“The partnership between Wholesale Investor and Cake will not only help our entrepreneur partners, but also the private markets and venture capital space more broadly by connecting capital to opportunities.”
More than 200 Australian companies already use the service, including household names such as Koala, Outland Denim, and professional services firm BlueRock. The end-to-end service converges accounting, digital marketing, legal and compliance, payments, and investor relations for unlisted companies.
Cake was founded in 2017 and most recently completed a successful $1 million seed raising in 2020. Cake is currently available to Australian investors, with ambitions to expand to the UK market.
