Jolla Chairman launches Zipper Platform to fund startups

Jolla Chairman Antti Saarnio and other former Jolla team members have launched an investment platform Zipper to fund more than 1,000 startups.

The platform aims to fix the biggest early stage funding pain points for both investors and startups with milestone and token-based investments. Funds are disbursed to startups based on actual reached milestones, and not funding round promises. This way even early stage startups can get large amounts of funding at once, instead of spending a lot of time in several funding rounds.

The investor uses Zipper’s own cryptographic tokens to invest, which are then disbursed to startups or returned to the investor automatically with Ethereum blockchain smart contracts. At first, Zipper focusses in attracting investments to early stage startups, which are aiming to launch their own tokens.

Startups’ tokens are liquid. Thus, the investor can exit anytime by selling their tokens in the open market. Tokens also help startups to scale more easily as they can be used to incentivize their networks, such as users and contractors.

Dr Antti Saarnio, Founder, Zipper, said, “Jolla has now raised 70 MUSD in six years with five funding rounds. We have spent tremendous amount of time doing fundraising, while the company has constantly suffered from shortage of capital, and early investors haven’t had a chance to exit. I started thinking ways to fund startups in a more efficient model to address these problems, and Zipper was born.”

“We aim to fund more than 1,000 early stage startups through the platform. This will require up to $1-billion funding. We will start sales of our own ZIP token soon and plan to fund a portion of startup investments with the token sales revenue, and the remaining would be funded by other investors using the platform, which is open for all professional investors,” added Saarnio.

Third Space Auto, an artificial intelligence and machine learning startup is among the first startups on the platform. Third Space Auto is starting R&D projects with Volkswagen Group companies aiming at piloting different applications based on AI, voice recognition, machine learning, and smartphone technologies.

Third Space Auto’s CEO and Founder, Arshia Gratiot, comments, “What appeals to me the most is that they are ethical and transparent in an area, which is not as regulated as the traditional funding space so I can sleep at night knowing that my company and our funders are in safe hands."

Zipper plans to pilot the platform and make its own token sale during the upcoming few months.

Tags: Jolla Chairman, Zipper Platform, fund startups, Dr Antti Saarnio Founder Zipper, Third Space Auto, Arshia Gratiot ceo third space auto