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Fintech firm lemon.markets stocks up €15M to launch its brokerage platform

lemon.markets
Image credits: lemon.markets

Berlin-based fintech company, lemon.markets which offers an easy-to-use API for stock trading, announced that it has secured €15M in seed financing co-led by Lakestar and Lightspeed. 

Other investors like Creandum, System.one, and angel investors, including operators from N26, Public.com, sennder, Taxfix, Finoa, and Stripe, participated.

The German company will use the funds to accelerate its product development, extending its usage to businesses that wish to integrate stock trading into their services. Further, the company plans to focus on hiring talent onboard the already rapidly growing team. 

What does lemon.markets solve?

Stock trading has already become an essential part of today’s world. Consequently, every major company is incorporating brokerage services into their offering as a means to participate in the stock market. 

However, the technology and infrastructure needed to build and integrate these brokerage services are nascent in Europe. A stable and reliable trading API, designed particularly for developers, is noticeably absent in the market. 

And here’s where lemon.markets come into play with its stock trading API. The company says more and more people are looking for tailored solutions, creating a demand for infrastructure that enables personalised portfolio trackers, trading automation, custom saving plans, and the vision doesn’t stop there.

“European brokerage is ripe for disruption. We strongly believe that every tech company should be able to embed financial services into their offering and lemon.markets want to facilitate that. The demand is already there. Our infrastructure solution takes care of all the plumbing, so developers in these companies can dedicate their focus to creating value for users. We can’t wait to see the many different ways our API will be applied,” says Co-founder and CEO, Max Linden.

Disrupting European brokerage

Founded by Marcel Katenhusen and Maximilian Linden in 2020, lemon.markets allow developers to build their investment and trading tools for the stock market via their trading API. 

The German company aims to become the infrastructure for the next 100M European retail investors

Currently, the API’s uses cases include personalised savings plans, automated trading strategies, and contextual use cases like reinvesting tax refunds. 

lemon.markets’ features are co-designed by its users, including software development kits (SDKs), claims the company.

The company also says users have been executing trades in closed alpha, helping to improve the product ahead of its launch in Q2 2022. 

Investor

Based out of Zurich, Lakestar is a venture capital firm investing in technology companies led by exceptional entrepreneurs. The VC’s expertise lies in fintech and its investments range from early-stage companies to those in their growth stage.

“lemon.markets is providing tech companies with the technical and regulatory infrastructure to integrate brokerage in their products – all through a single API. With companies facing increasing regulatory, compliance, and structural hurdles, lemon.markets abstract these complexities away for their customers through technology. The current technical infrastructure that makes up our world of finance is being rebuilt entirely,” says Lakestar Partner Nicolas Brand.

Lightspeed is a multi-stage VC firm focused on accelerating disruptive innovations and trends in the Enterprise, Consumer, and Health sectors. 

Since 2000, the company has backed companies like Snap, Affirm, AppDynamics, OYO, Nutanix, Byju’s, and Udaan. 

The VC currently manages more than $10B with investment professionals and advisors in India, Silicon Valley, Israel, China, Southeast Asia, and Europe.

“We’re thrilled to be backing the lemon.markets team as their product and mission fits squarely within our thesis of embedded finance.” says Justin Overdorff, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. “lemon.markets bottom-up developer-focused go-to-market strategy allows it to partner with the very best developers and companies building innovative and best-in-class products in the brokerage and securities trading space. An important part of their offering will be to scale those infrastructure products throughout Europe, setting the foundations for the next era of financial services across the continent.”

Creandum is an early-stage venture capital firm that backs the most ambitious tech companies from seed to exit across a wide range of industries.

Creandum’s advisory teams are based in Stockholm, London, Berlin, and San Francisco. 

“Max and the lemon.markets team are creating the next generation of fintech: laying the infrastructure that will power the next generation of equity trading products, and enriching existing products with equity investing capabilities. Their API first product is leading the charge in making brokerage universally accessible and adaptable. Seeing Max thrive over the last months strengthened our belief to back lemon.markets in this round.” says Creandum General Partner Simon Schmincke.

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