Fintech
Founder of ION Trading invests and joins the board, reinvigorating a stalled round
Client
Stellar Fusion
Industry
Technology
Service
Fundraising
Board build-out
Credibility
Momentum
Duration
2 weeks
OverView
Stellar Fusion CEO and co-founder Aneek Haq was coordinating a round in 2023 and was considering the merits of building out his board to include non-execs and / or creating an advisor panel. Stellar Fusion provides prebuilt and customisable financial models, saving investors valuable time by allowing them to focus on adjusting their assumptions to build scenarios of business performance and valuation. Stellar fusion provides tools for Investor Relations teams to communicate financial narrative and interact with current and potential investors.
The Challenge
JW Markets spent a significant amount of time with Aneek, to understand the business and its strategic direction. After a week of assessing the skill-set of the senior leadership team, the growth strategy of Stella Fusion and the risk areas to execution, an initial plan was formulated. It was decided that two advisors were sought: 1) B2B sales veteran with decades of experience selling into City firms, with a track record for value-creation within their own ventures. 2) An ex-CTO Fintech entrepreneur, who has successfully scaled a Fintech a founder through to maturity. Given the early stage of the business, and the founders’ preference for advisors who are going to be on the journey with them, investment in the funding round was seen as a strong sign of long term commitment to the role.
The Solution
Having extensive experience of both B2B services and Fintech segments allowed JW Markets to carry out efficient and extensive research, which included a deep dive into success stories of value-creation and exits.
The Result
After significant research into London-based fintech ex-CTO founders, a contact of JWM recommended Andrea Ceccolini, the co-founder and ex-CTO of Ion Trading. This recommendation was based on personal experience of having worked with Andrea for over a decade as he scaled Ion Trading from a start-up to the darling of the UK fintech industry. In 2019 the FT estimated its value at £7bn. Andrea’s advice has been instrumental in shaping the strategy of Stellar Fusion going forwards, including its use of AI in the creation of its base models. As well as investing personally, Andrea’s involvement acted as a catalyst for enlarging its seed funding round.
“Andrea is uniquely positioned to help us scale our solution and bring data-driven investing to both investors and corporates”
Charlie Mortimer
CFO co-founder of Stellar Fusion
