Weissenhaus Grand Village & Spa, the 5-star resort situated 100km north of Hamburg, has raised €7.5 million from 1,679 investors.
In previous years the resort has been funded by Hamburg-based entrepreneur Jan Henric Buettner who had put in €65 million to transform it into an exclusive resort. Beuttner revealed that the campaign was just “purely an experiment” to test the water and see how people responded.
Beuttner explained.
“We did not know how successful it would be. However, I have always liked to think outside the box, and the positive feedback we received for this project was outstanding."
"As a VC entrepreneur, I was less focused on raising funds than on running a flagship project that shows what can be done in Europe when new ways of financing are used. This was probably not my last such project."
Weissenhaus was the first real estate campaign to raise money on Companisto and received a great response from investors with the campaign having to re-launch in January this year due to high demand after originally launching in July 2014.
The 1,679 investors will each receive a 4% fixed interest rate for their funding and a variable bonus interest based on the resort's revenues. According to the managing director of Companisto, Tamo Zwinge, this campaign underlines the “great potential” of equity-based crowdfunding in Europe.
Zwinge added:
"Through the Weissenhaus campaign, we wanted to introduce a new asset class and enable interested investors to diversify their portfolio."
"The combination of a fixed interest of 4% and a variable bonus interest based on the resort's revenues convinced 1,679 people to invest a total of 7.5 million euros.”
Since launching Companisto has helped fund 18,177,155 euros into different projects and has 34,187 companists (investors) using the platform. There are currently has 39 live campaigns on the site.
