Fintech Butterwire raises £300,000 for app

Scottish fintech Butterwire has secured more than £300,000 in crowdfunding investment to market its product and grow its user base.

The company, which runs an artificial intelligence-driven app to support equity investors, achieved more than 150 per cent of its funding target on the Crowdcube platform.

The funding round finished with a total of £308,000 from 234 investors, clearing the original £200,000 target ten days before the fund closed.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Butterwire’s app uses AI to provide individual investors with information on how to structure and self manage their own equity portfolio.

Although headquartered in London, all employees except chief executive Raphael Fiorentino are based in Scotland, and app development takes place north of the Border.

The business has received the backing of economic development organisation Scottish Enterprise.

Butterwire announced it will use the funding generated from Crowdcube to invest in its structure and launch a global marketing campaign, on the back of its recent strategic partnership with digital marketing firm Transatlantic.

Fiorentino told The Scotsman: “Because our tech team is in place and our product is live, everything we have raised is going to go towards sustaining the structure we have and investing in gaining commercial traction, so getting us that much closer to revenue generation and boosting the user base.”

He said the fintech is targeting professional and non-professional investors, as the product aids professionals by allowing them to “save time and to do more with less”, while it supports amateur fund managers with “professional grade tools”.

Although the app uses AI technology, chief technology officer Paul Sinclair said the product enhances human decisions, rather than attempting to replace them.

He said: “We’re using machine learning, AI techniques, to come up with the results but we call it “augmented intelligence” because we’re not trying to replace the individual. We’re trying to make them better at what they do.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“We still believe that in a longer term investing strategy, people need to make decisions for themselves.

“The app can give them the professional level of information that you would get from your own team, but they are still the fund manager for themselves.”

Since its launch in June, the app has collected several hundred regular users.

Sinclair added: “We already have a global mix of individual investors and institutional professionals using Butterwire. We plan to continue that organic growth, and head into next year with a plan for venture capital funding the first quarter of 2019.”

Related topics: