Participated · Seed · Dec 2023

Founded in 2021, Bling offers a family-focused digital platform that combines pocket-money payments, investing features, task and shopping planners, and family-friendly mobile communications. The company emphasizes financial and media literacy through simple visualisations and educational content in-app and on social media. In 2022 Bling launched a pocket money card and accompanying app and has since evolved into a holistic B2B2C platform via partnerships with firms including Société Générale and Evergreen. In February 2024 Bling added "Bling Mobile" family-friendly phone plans in collaboration with Telekom. The product mix is aimed at both direct consumers and partners who want access to the family target group. To date the company has raised more than $15 million. Bling is a Berlin fintech founded in 2021 that provides a family-focused account solution with a prepaid Mastercard and companion app aimed at teenagers and parents. The product includes a family planner and other features to simplify household finance management. This summer Bling launched "Sparbäume," a family-friendly investing feature that lets users invest from as little as one euro. Although live for just over a year, the company reports tens of thousands of family users and has grown to about 30 employees. Bling operates a subscription model—founders say all families have a paid subscription—which the team cites as driving low acquisition costs, viral growth and quick ROI. Early operational challenges included a global chip shortage that temporarily disrupted card supply; the company says it is now better prepared. Management plans to roll out additional features and products in the coming months to further support family financial literacy. Bling offers a finance platform aimed specifically at families, with parents creating a family account, receiving a card and setting up child accounts. The product includes educational modules for parents and children, a child payment card, chore-based allowances, customizable cards, savings pots and early investment plans. Families and the wider community can join via links to contribute to savings and manage household spending, creating network effects that the company says helped growth. The startup reports 10,000+ children using a Bling Card as their first personal payment experience six months after launch. Its business model combines direct subscriptions, transaction and product fees, and partnerships (initially mobile phone plans and insurance). Bling omits KYC for first sub-€150 amounts and positions itself against a large German pocket-money and household-spend opportunity cited in the article.

Led · Seed · Dec 2022

Foodetective offers a unified commerce infrastructure and single operating system that lets restaurants and merchants integrate, manage, and automate their entire tech stack and operations. Launched in 2019 and co-founded by Andrea Tassistro and Edouard Thimon, the company is headquartered in Geneva, Paris and Madrid. Merchants connect systems through a click-and-connect Integration Hub with over 250 integrations, centralizing data on an analytics dashboard to manage reviews, orders, reservations, suppliers, stocks, marketing and more. The platform provides an interface and API designed to grow online revenues, simplify administration, and accelerate new business opportunities. Foodetective raised $5.5M in Seed funding to further develop its technology and IT team and to begin implementing machine learning algorithms for intelligent push notifications and actions. Planned Intelligence features include personalized data-based notifications, direct access to partner integrations and offers, competitive market analysis, regulatory updates, and actionable on-the-go insights to reduce inefficiencies and improve processes. Foodetective provides a SaaS marketplace and multi-channel commerce platform designed for large and small restaurants and other food and beverage services. The platform enables restaurants to manage, integrate and aggregate apps into a single interface and offers each client a tailor-made dashboard based on their tech stack and needs. It integrates services from 300+ vendor partners and POS providers such as Square, Uber Eats, Stripe and Orkestro, and hundreds of wholesalers including Nestlé and other leading FMCG companies. More than 17,500 food and beverage businesses use the Foodetective platform, including Shiso Burger in Geneva, Neko Ramen in Paris, and Tommy’s Burgers in London. Led by founder and CEO Andrea Tassistro, the company intends to use new funding to launch its API. The company is based in Geneva, Switzerland and Paris, France.