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Private investor platform Moonfare raises $28m

Katharine Hidalgo
15 April 2019

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Moonfare, a Berlin-based platform that allows wealthy individuals to invest in private equity funds, has raised $28m from private investors.

Investors in the round include ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE’s former CEO Thomas Ebeling, former KKR partner Henrik Kraft and ex-BC Partners chair Jens Reidel. The company raised the funds in three weeks, according to a statement.

The platform claims to have hundreds of individual investors participating in the platform and more than €100m in assets under management. The minimum investment for participation is $100,000. Investors can choose from the platform’s range of funds to build their own portfolio - 45% of participants invest in two or more funds and 20% invest in three or more.

“In our offering, we try to give our investors access to a variety of funds. We offer more choice than a traditional fund-of-funds,” Moonfare head of online sales Douglas Trafelet told Unquote.

The platform currently offers investment in six funds, including EQT Middle Market Asia, EQT VIII, Carlyle VII, Warburg Pincus Global Growth, Oakley IV and Cinven VII. Moonfare co-invests in all funds it offers to its investors.

“We choose the funds we invest in through a combination of looking at past performance and reputation as well as performing due diligence into the firm itself. We look at their strategy, if the fund’s fees are fair and if the investment team is up to standard,” Trafelet said.

Moonfare was launched in 2017 but has been active in investing and taking investments since the first quarter of 2018. In its first year, it offered access to five funds and expects to offer its clients access to 8-10 funds this year. With the new funding the company will expand geographically and invest further in its own technology.

The company also plans to grow the size of its investment in funds from its first fund, which was €10m to more than €50m. “We’ve been getting feedback from our investors to create funds for exposure to VC, debt funds, real estate and infrastructure funds in the future,” Trafelet told Unquote. The platform also has the technological capability to allow for secondaries transactions between participants through an auction process, though there has been no practical application of this function yet.

The two-year-old company -- whose investors include ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE’s former Chief Executive Officer Thomas Ebeling, former KKR & Co. partner Henrik Kraft and ex-BC Partners Chairman Jens Reidel -- raised the funds in three weeks, it said in a statement on Thursday.