London-based Primary Portal raises 5.3 million GBP seed round, led by Dutch Founders Fund and Flow Traders

Primary Portal, a digital platform that aggregates and digitises equity capital market deals for banks and asset managers, has raised a £5.3 million seed round led by Dutch Founders Fund and Flow Traders.

Founders John Bentinck and Ilan Leshem started the company in 2020 to address the dated and inefficient communication in equity issuance processes. The platform doesn’t replace any suite of products, but rather declutters inboxes full of email threads and attachments. Primary Portal has successfully established itself with over 50 banks and 1,000 active users throughout Europe and Asia, and launched its offering in the US market at the beginning of November. 

“This team has all the knowledge and experience needed to solve this problem of making capital markets more efficient,” says Dutch Founders Fund founding partner Laurens Groenendijk. “They are basically building the infrastructure to democratise investing in IPOs.” 

As experienced capital markets veterans, Bentinck and Leshem understand that Primary Portal needs to plug into the existing platforms of banks and asset managers. “Banks don't want to be beholden to a single group of products,” says Bentinck, “they want to have the flexibility to create their own tapestry of interoperable systems.”  

The platform automates some of the manual and time-consuming processes whilst integrating with a number of tools that banks and investors already use. When looking at the Primary Portal dashboard, clients can see live IPOs, recently priced ABOs, Convertibles, rights issues, and other equity products. Additionally, each item links to further details about the offering, as well as further research when applicable.  

“Primary Portal’s real-time dashboard is rapidly earning permanent desktop space on traders’ screens,” says Groenendijk. 

As the largest IPO market in the world, expanding to the U.S. is a natural next step for Primary Portal. In fact, many clients have been so enthusiastic about the product’s expansion that several invested in the seed round to ensure its success. “When the users of your product are the ones asking if they can invest in the company, that's a strong endorsement and also good for the alignment of interests,” Bentinck says. 

In addition to entering the U.S. market, Primary Portal also intends to expand its offerings, such as enabling institutional investors to communicate feedback and indications of interest to banks. “The big plan is to develop both our own products as well as the collaborations with others. We want to continue to bring the buyside and the banks together in one digital marketplace so that other companies that are working in the same environment can use that connectivity,” says Bentinck. 

As banks and buyers strive to streamline their processes over the coming years, Primary Portal is set to become a favourite tool for the industry. “Although it’s still in the early stages, we believe Primary Portal will be super impactful on the equity market on a global scale,” says Groenendijk. 

About Primary Portal

Primary Portal is a fintech company focused on developing and operating digital infrastructure solutions for equity capital markets and on automating manual and time-consuming processes in the issuance process. For more information, please visit www.primaryportal.com. 

About Dutch Founders Fund

Dutch Founders Fund (DFF) is an early-stage venture capital fund from Amsterdam started by the people behind WeTransfer, Just Eat, Treatwell and fonQ. DFF invests in B2B marketplaces and other businesses that are built upon network effects; backing founders all over Europe and MENA region.

Since its launch in 2018, the fund has successfully invested in 24 companies. These include: YourCampus, Shypple, Vintage Cash Cow, Lumaly, Blanco, Nostics, Reveall, Veylinx, Wonderkind, Voicebooking, Fleks, Minimum, Caya, Winc Academy, Buildstream, Govin, Kennek, Underline, Vamstar, Mtor, Smiler, Northladder, Reverse Supply and Tracedock (exited to CM.com). The fund has almost 100m EUR in AuM and currently invests from its second vehicle. For more information see www.dutchfoundersfund.com or mail to basrieter@dutchfoundersfund.com