Write-off and Lessons Learned

The Grow VC Group has decided to write off its ownership in Deal Index Limited. London based company, Deal Index, aggregated data from crowdfunding and alternative lending services. The target was to become a leading data provider in the market. The market didn’t become significant enough and we also learned the whole data market needs a change.

The Grow VC Group was involved in Deal Index since 2014. The company managed to become, for example, the crowdfunding index provider for CNBC in Europe and Asia. The crowdfunding, but also p2p lending, markets development didn’t manage to meet our expectations all the while the fintech and alternative finance market otherwise grew very rapidly. Crypto finance has also changed the market.

We also learned that models to focus to aggregate a lot of data and then try to monetize it are becoming more challenging. Many parties try to protect their own data, and Deal Index was not able to innovate quickly enough with business models. The crowdfunding market especially is also challenging to get reliable data and utilize it, when the companies are typically in an early phase and investments are less based on data.

The Grow VC Group has been active to build and incubate new digital finance businesses since 2009. The market is developing so rapidly that we must learn all the time from the market and also be able to offer new and more innovative businesses and offerings. It is also fundamental to put focus and resources on companies and segments where we see enough growth. We have abandoned equity crowdfunding businesses and at the same time achieved a lot of success with technology and data solutions that can disrupt the whole finance market.

Our latest company, Prifina, focuses on data in finance services. It totally changes technology and business models of traditional data business. It is based on distributed ledger technology models and it gives ownership and control of data to consumers and customers. We believe that distributed solutions are the future of the finance industry, they will change the whole industry and data business also changes significantly from centralized data models where big players try to aggregate and monetize all customer data, to models where customers are empowered with their own data.
 
More information:
Jouko Ahvenainen, jouko@growvc.com