Cheers in Hamburg: “2,052 investors* have subscribed for virtual shares worth 3,000,000. And are now part of Tomorrow in a completely new way. The whole team is looking forward to this next step! We thank you all for your untiring support” the Social Media Team tweeted yesterday, Wednesday.
A month ago, the Hamburg Neo-Bank Tomorrow announced they were going to collect money from Crowd. Target volume: two million euros! That’s another 100,000 euros more. This is a signal for the local Fintech industry, because while elsewhere it is almost normal to collect capital from customers, this step is unique in Germany. But the British have shown the way: “Monzo” has made several crowdfunding rounds. In 2016, the British Challenger Bank collected one million pounds within 96 seconds, in 2018 it was 20 million pounds in just two days! Not bad!
The Hamburgers cannot quite keep up with these amounts, but the champagne corks probably popped anyway. As the self-sponsored sum was already drawn after a few hours, the afternoon even saw a further 50 percent increase. “We are still completely overwhelmed by the participation and all the support,” the company said.
The sustainable neo-bank Tomorrow was founded in 2018 by Jakob Berndt, Inas Nureldin and Michael Schweikart. According to the Hamburg-based company’s own figures, 40,000 customers, of the 73 million euros that users have deposited in the bank, almost 20 million euros are in green funds. At Tomorrow, customer money exclusively supports sustainable projects, since every single Payment for climate protection to this.
What does the Payment and Banking Team say about this transaction? Sensible, worthy of imitation, competition for competitors? Or the desperate attempt to get money?
André M. Bajorat
Tomorrow is not a typical Fintech in the sense of a venture case. Here it was always about ‘more’ and therefore the way of the ‘Cooperative 2.0’ fits to the company and the team. If you want to act differently, you also have to take different paths. This is exactly what I see here. In my opinion, the classic VC case would have ended up in a dead end in terms of interests. Therefore, the step of turning the crowd into investors is, in my view, consistent.
Can the whole thing work? Yes. Will Tomorrow become a challenger for other players like N26? No. However, the values and products that come from the team are very much in tune with the spirit of the times, even outside the COVID bubble.
I keep my fingers crossed
Maik Klotz
I was sceptical at first, but now I see things completely differently. Of course it is also about getting money. But above all it is about becoming more independent of investors. Anyone who knows the team knows that they really do have a mission and it’s not about “greenwashing”. Whether or not the approach works is a matter of divided opinion. But they are consistent and courageous. The timing is good, because in times when people’s hands are tied in more ways than one, Tomorrow offers the opportunity to do something “good”. I, too, keep my fingers crossed.
Christina Cassala
The approval for this step was very high from the community. Why? More than almost any other neo-bank, the Hamburgers stand for values and goals, the products are a means to an end here. Those who have an account with Tomorrow share these goals. This creates a sense of community and produces loyalty, which is now also reflected in the sum of the investments made. Do I think it is good to make clients into investors in a bank and thus make them owners of a company whose success they cannot influence. In the case of an N26 bank, my answer would be quite clear. No! But the loyalty of customers to Tomorrow is great, and small, lower-yielding steps are supported because the approach of the Hamburg-based bank was different from the start and was communicated as such. Much more than capital, the team can rely on their user base, who are worth more as ambassadors than VCs.
Nicole Nitsche
“Bad banks belong to bad bankers, Tomorrow belongs to you” – quite catchy this announcement, one could also read as a provocation, but in this matter I know that Tomorrow really has only good things in mind, because the Fintech in Hamburg wants to combine mobile banking and sustainable finances and exactly this corporate philosophy can now also be shared by micro investors. The Fintech’s campaign has exceeded their expectations, because within 5 hours the Tomorrow team had raised 3 million and pushed the crowd investing platform to its limits, something that some crowd funders can only dream of. The great success can probably be attributed above all to the Fintech’s influencer strategy, as the young company picks up its consumers through precisely these channels. I believe that the approval has a lot to do with the target group of customers and consumers. Keyword: Purpose. The people at Tomorrow have recognized the trend to recognize that sustainable companies and sustainable investments have something to do with all of us. To support something with sense and reason is in the trend: Because actually all those who are somehow involved in this industry know: by choosing your bank you may not support the very best business sectors and industries with less ethical backgrounds, even unintentionally. Tomorrow wants to put their clients’ money into positive contexts, that makes absolute sense to me and I am happy that so many people support this idea.