German national goalkeeper and FC Bayern Munich player Manuel Neuer has acquired a ten percent stake in the startup Votebase. The remaining ten percent will be secured by Rose Bikes Managing Director Marcus Diekmann and Shopware founder Stefan Hammann. Votebase has developed an election app that is based on Blockchain technology and was designed by the two tech founders Payman Supervizer and Maximilian Pieters specifically for elections with extremely high security requirements.
Manuel Neuer already attracted attention as an investor last year when he Vaha The Berlin-based fitness tech startup is developing a smart fitness mirror that will act as a personal trainer for the home. Another former Bayern Munich player who continues to attract attention in the (Munich) startup scene is Philipp Lahm. He supports, among others, Startup Teens and invested, among other things, in Fanmiles and Danova.
Ready for roll-out
By using blockchain, the app aims to ensure that people are clearly verified in the frontend of the application and can only vote with voting rights, while in the backend, it's no longer possible to trace who cast the vote. Votebase aims to make its app available worldwide as open source, so anyone can adapt the software to their needs. Co-founder Payman Supervisor explains:
"We built this solution with the goal of fundamentally and essentially promoting our democracy. Therefore, we believe it's essential to provide people with insight and understanding into the aspects of our solution. We've laid the technological foundation over the past two years, and the app is now ready for rollout and marketing. We want our app to be in use by the next regional and local elections in Germany."
Manuel Neuer says about Votebase:
“In countries where citizens cannot or only with difficulty physically vote, Votebase will be a great help.”
Making elections more inclusive
And Marcus Diekmann added:
"It is absolutely unacceptable to me that in the digital age we still conduct elections physically or via paper ballots, thereby unnecessarily excluding many people. We believe that with an app like Votebase, the election process will change and voter turnout will drastically increase. This is a great opportunity for democracy and for political parties to evolve."
