A different kind of capital for small businesses.

The problem

Plenty of small businesses are healthy, locally rooted, and ready to grow. Banks find them too risky for a meaningful loan. Venture capital finds them too small to bother. Regular crowdfunding gets them money but no real support. The result is that good businesses get stuck.

The model

The community pools capital to back a business. GrowthShare itself holds the equity and the voting rights. Backers do not own shares directly. Instead they receive a contractual share of the future returns, in proportion to what they put in.

Think of it like an exchange traded fund. The community has the economic rights. GrowthShare has the voting rights. We use those rights to provide hands on support to the founder on legal, tax, marketing and operations, so the capital actually turns into a stronger business.

This structure matters for Dutch tax reasons and keeps the experience simple for backers. No share register. No general meeting invitations. Just a clear stake in the upside.

Team

Three students from Maastricht University with three different angles on the same problem.

Marco Smit

Business and partnerships

MSc IB — Entrepreneurship and Business Development

FoundersPartnersEcosystem

Daniel van Hees

Product

MSc IB — Information Management and Business Intelligence

RoadmapPlatformResearch

Nicole Duque

Technology and data

MSc Imaging Engineering, specialising in AI and data

EngineeringDataMatching

Between the three of us we cover commercial, product, and technology. For the regulated parts of the business, tax structuring, securities law, accounting, we work with specialist advisors rather than pretend to be them ourselves.

Talk to us in your language.

Between the three of us we cover Dutch, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Luxembourgish, Afrikaans and English. If you are a founder thinking about applying, or a backer with a question before pledging, we would rather have the conversation in the language you actually think in.

Why us

We are not the first people to look at small business funding. We are trying to be the first to combine real capital with real operational help, in a structure that works for Dutch tax and Dutch backers. We come from three countries between us. We have lived this gap personally, watched family and friends try to start something and run into it.

The reason we are building GrowthShare is the same reason we think it will work: most of the people it is meant to help are not waiting for a venture capital fund to find them. They are already here, in our region, ready to grow.

Get in touch

Questions, ideas, or a business you think should be on the platform? We read every message.