1. New approaches to fundraising
Imagine you've opened a specialty coffee roastery with an attached café in the heart of Munich. After a long period of preparation, you've finally opened and welcomed your first customers. At a regional gastronomy event, you meet a few food bloggers and coffee lovers who spontaneously want to invest to expand your product range and support your marketing. Instead of waiting months for the next round of financing and attending expensive notary appointments, you can complete the investments immediately with Tokenize.it.
2. Digital profit participation rights: How the model works
The platform is based on the established concept of profit participation rights and transports them into the digital world. The highlight: As a startup or small business, you can grant economic participations without
- a visit to the notary becomes necessary,
- Investors appear in the commercial register,
- high minimum investments are required.
Processing takes place via the Ethereum blockchain. This means that each digital participation right is represented there as a token, without requiring any in-depth blockchain knowledge from you or your investors. All relevant processes – from signing up to payment via bank transfer – can be completed online in just a few minutes.
3. Continuous fundraising: private vs. public fundraising
With Tokenize.it, you can structure your fundraising flexibly, not only in terms of timing but also in terms of how you approach investors. Private fundraising allows you to send a digital offer to up to 149 potential backers without publishing an official prospectus. This upper limit applies regardless of the respective investment amount. If you reach or exceed this limit, the fundraising can be seamlessly transferred to a public offering. This allows you to raise up to eight million euros in twelve months from an unlimited number of investors. Marketing measures – such as targeted social media campaigns or newsletters that lead directly to the offer – are also permitted.
4. Employee participation and bonus programs
Employee participation rights are also possible with Tokenize.it's profit participation rights. Just like with the previously common methods using ESOPS/VSOPS, profit participation rights can also be used to model cliffs and vesting periods that bind employees to you in the long term. There are no tax disadvantages either – if anything, profit participation rights as virtual shares offer significant tax advantages over VSOPS. Ultimately, however, the function of employee participation is nothing other than the issuance of profit participation rights as GmbH tokens, without the startup receiving any money in return. This function can therefore also be used to issue shares to loyal customers or as part of loyalty programs. A concrete example: The 10 customers who spent the most money on your coffee over an entire year receive a small share in the company in the form of digital profit participation rights at the end of the year.
Conclusion
Whether it's unexpectedly interested coffee lovers at an event or strategic investors who want to invest in your roastery long-term, with Tokenize.it, you're always in control of your fundraising. Digital profit participation rights eliminate time-consuming notary appointments, don't require high minimum amounts, and allow for lightning-fast investments. In an increasingly digital business world, you create a stable yet future-oriented foundation for further expanding your business.
Want to learn more about Tokenize.it and meet the team in person? Join us on February 13, 2025, for the kickoff of our Foundacious event series. With our partners CMS, Google Cloud, and CANS, we'll be focusing on concrete added value for founders. Nina Killes from The People Branding Company will be there, sharing her LinkedIn expertise in her talk on personal branding. Click here to register.
