Darren Westlake Talks Crowdcube Success & Crowdfunding Growth

Giving others an insight on the crowdfunding industry, Crowdcube’s Darren Westlake sat down with Business Money to discuss the UK platform and the funding method’s growth.

During the interview, Westlake revealed that he is on a mission to bridge the gap between old school investors and new fintech innovators:

“We can work together we’re not displacing the older ways of raising money and the establishment. It’s about adding to it and adding value to those more established players. There’s still a lot of people out there who don’t really understand crowdfunding and how it works.”

While chatting about Crowdcube being selected as one of the six partners by the London Co-Investment Fund (LCIF), Westlake acknowledged the program has definitely helped the platform’s growth and success:

“It’s a bit endorsement of crowdfunding its acceptance amongst traditional ways of raising money. Having VCs, having the government and having angels all mixed together in a single round is fascinating and that’s the way the industry will evolve I think.”

Also sharing his crowdfunding industry predictions, Westlake noted:

“You’re getting these growth stage companies coming through now, they’re not startups anymore, they’ve been established for six or seven years and they’re profitable and they’ve got strong balance sheets and are looking to raise money to grow into the next level.

 

“The other thing that we expect to happen over the next couple of years is that the public markets will start to collide with the private ones. So we’ve obviously been listing private companies up until now, but we think that the crowd will want to invest in private companies and public companies, and it would make sense to have those public companies on a crowdfund platform like ours as well as the private ones. I think that’s what we expect, and that’s what we’re encouraging to happen.”

In regards to Crowdcube’s expansion to other countries, Westlake added:

“We recognize that people like to deal with people they know, particularly in Scotland. There’s a lot of opportunities up there and we’re looking to open other offices as well.”