Sydney fintech Upstreet, an app that permits buyers to earn fractional ASX shares from their spending, is shutting down, lower than 18 months after banking $3 million
The closure comes only a fortnight after the fintech marked its fourth anniversary on social media, having raised practically $5 million in its lifetime.
Whereas the Upstreet web site continues to function business-as-usual, cofounders Christian Eckleman and Sabine Tejerina emailed customers final week to say that they had “taken the tough determination to shut down” and “will cease selling and distributing the fund and provoke steps to wind-up the Upstreet fund.”
The married cofounders didn’t reply to Startup Each day’s request for remark. Antler Australia, who backed the startup with pre-seed funding as a part of its first cohort, declined to remark.
In March final yr, Upstreet raised $3 million in Seed-plus funding. That spherical was led by Wattle Hill Capital supported by Kelly+Companions Funding Workplace, McKinsey & Co. Companions and personal traders together with MadPaws CEO Justus Hammer, Bell Potter’s Hugh Robertson, Omnilab Media chair Christopher Mapp and Wattle Hill founder Albert Tse. Black Nova can also be a backer.
The premise for the enterprise was that when an Upstreet buyer shopped with a publicly-traded firm they’ll earn fractional shares in that ASX-listing – for instance, order meal kits from Marley Spoon and get a small chew of the corporate too. It additionally labored for NYSE and NASDAQ-listed corporations reminiscent of eBay too.
It was pitched to corporations as a method to improve buyer loyalty, and for patrons, the democratisation of share possession.
Throughout final yr’s increase, Eckleman mentioned that whereas the VC funding atmosphere was difficult, they’d “been in a position to showcase extremely robust returns from our retail companions in a brief interval and proved our mannequin”.
On the time, the corporate mentioned greater than 400 Australian and worldwide manufacturers featured on the platform, which labored as an app and web site API.
The explanation the duo are shutting down Upstreet has not been disclosed.