Ep 30: Martins Sulte
on building Europe’s largest loan marketplace, pre-requisites of successful crowdfunding, and road to becoming a licensed investment firm
Martins Sulte is the co-founder and CEO of Mintos marketplace. Mintos is the leading loan investment platform in continental Europe with more than 7bn EUR of loans funded. Recently Mintos ran a successful crowdfunding campaign, netting around 7mEUR from its community. On top of that, they have just announced receiving an investment broker license from Latvian finance watchdog FKTK.
In this episode, we talk about the evolution of the Mintos product and the P2P lending/loan investment platform industry as such. We also cover what it takes to run a successful crowdfunding campaign. Finally, we talk about the Mintos achievement of securing an investment broker license and the state and outlook of the Latvian financial services market.
CLICK one of the links below to listen to the episode
The topics covered in this episode (with Timestamps)
🔈 [01:20] INTRODUCTION AND THE ORIGINS OF MINTOS
🔈 [6:00] ON MINTOS PRODUCT AND THE P2P LENDING INDUSTRY
The chicken and egg problem of supply/demand for a marketplace
Growth opportunities within the industry
The majority of people in Europe are not investing as a whole
Building a great product as the main customer acquisition tool
The evolution of the P2P lending industry
Education of the retail investor base
The role of crypto in the lending and investing markets
🔈 [26:00] ON CROWDFUNDING AS AN ALTERNATIVE FUNDING METHOD
Considerations for choosing crowdfunding as a fundraising method
Structuring a crowdfund
Pre-requisites for successful crowdfunding
Liquidity of crowdfunding investments
VC investment environment in European Fintech
Secondary markets for crowdfunding investors
Impact on the company of publicly traded “private shares”
🔈 [39:25] - ON GETTING INVESTMENT BROKER LICENCE AND THE LATVIAN FINANCIAL MARKET OUTLOOK
The regulatory status of P2P lending over the years
Considerations for obtaining an investment broker license
Peculiarities of working with the Latvian regulator
PR of the national financial sector
Evolution of the fintech and general tech space in Latvia
Availability of talent
Promising areas of Fintech
What’s next for Mintos
To reach out to Martins use Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinssulte/
Find out more on https://www.pursuitofscrappiness.co/
Support for this episode comes from Nexpay > https://paynexpay.com/
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Find out more on https://www.pursuitofscrappiness.co/
