After working a few years in the logistics sector, Martin Migge was once again taken by an entrepreneurial urge, more than 10 years after founding his very first digital company in Germany.
“The idea was born several years ago, when I read a few interesting books on how to make a fundamental analysis of stock-listed companies,” Martin Migge explains. “The theory of fundamental analysis was super interesting to me, but there was – and still is – a lack of the right tools. So I ended up creating Excel spreadsheets to build company valuation models.”
But the power of the Excel spreadsheet has limits and, above all, the encoding of data – after long hours of data collection – remains a tedious exercise. “I thought there must be an easier way to deal with this.”
The accelerator Fit 4 Start #8
These thoughts led to the birth of the initial concept of Valuu.io, whose first beta version of the website was launched in January 2019. Hosted at the Luxembourg House of Finance Technology (LHoFT) from summer 2019, the company also participated Luxinnovation’s Fit 4 Start programme until last September.
Fit 4 Start is a great opportunity to challenge startups on various aspects of their business idea.
“This programme is a great opportunity to challenge startups on various aspects of their business idea. During those 16 weeks, working with coaches with varied and complementary backgrounds helped us a lot in seeing our initial idea from various perspectives. We also have a very useful external coaching to tackle specific topics, such as GDPR/data protection or marketing. The Fit 4 Start grant certainly helped to speed up some of our developments.”
The entire autumn and early winter were then spent coding, setting up the cloud infrastructure and preparing many other crucial aspects of the commercial launch, which took place in January via the brand new website valuu.io.
“The platform is now available to individual, private investors, not only in Luxembourg but also internationally,” Mr Migge points out.
Data about more than 45,000 publicly listed companies
The software automation tool developed by Valuu.io collects hundreds of thousands of data points on more than 45,000 publicly listed companies every day. It makes this information accessible and comprehensive.
Using various analytical tools available on the site, the system then generates reports on these companies to help investors understand how the companies operate and their financial situation. And all this is done in complete neutrality. “We provide our services as a ‘freemium’ subscription: users can take as much time as they want to try out the free service and then upgrade to the premium subscription, once they are familiar with our services.”
Although the platform is technically capable of serving customers around the world, Valuu.io is focusing its initial efforts on Europe. “This is where the stock investments are the fastest growing investment category among private households. The next milestone will be to add our stock portfolio tool to our service. It will allow users to analyse their self-created stock portfolio in terms of risk, diversification, and other factors. We also work on educational content and the localisation of our service so that more users can get access to it,” Mr Migge concludes.