Max Crowdfund is an international real estate crowdfunding platform that uses blockchain technology. Max Property Group, which was founded in 2016, owns 100% of the company.
Initially Max Property Group wanted to set up property funds for the smaller (retail) investor, but after having launched 4 funds, they realised that dealing with a large numbers of investors would be the bottle neck for rapid expansion.
Towards the end of 2018 they decided to automate the investment process by setting up a real estate crowdfunding platform. Erwin van Kekem, as a previous founder of a crowdfunding platform, was recruited to be the CTO and develop the platform.
By 2020 the platform was finished and in July of that year Max Crowdfund received approval from the Dutch Financial Regulators, the AFM. This made Max Crowdfund the first real estate crowdfunding platform on blockchain in the world to obtain approval from regulators.
The first loan went live in October 2020 and during 2021 they raised a total of €12M+ on the platform.
During 2021 Max Property Group successfully closed a €4.25M equity round, which will be used to obtain regulatory approval for all EU countries, the UK, New Zealand and Australia, build an entirely new software platform and expand on the functionalities to ensure rapid international expansion is possible.
In 2021 they created the MCF Token on the Binance Smart Chain. The MCF Token has a build in 5% commission, which will go to the Liquidity Pool providers on Pancakeswap, a 1% commission for all token holders and the MCF token will be integrated on the Max Crowdfund platforms for the loyalty program and a priority list for investors.
On top of all that, there is a burn program where 0.1% of all money raised on all Max Crowdfund platforms will be used to buy back and burn MCF tokens.
It is our mission to become the biggest real estate crowdfunding platform in the world and allow people (anyone) to invest in real estate backed assets, whereever they are in the world.
Tell us about yourself?
I have been working in financial start-ups, such as online banks and brokers (Alex for example) for a long period of time and have recently resigned from the CEO position of an online broker to join Max Property Group and more specifically Max Crowdfund, as I am extremely excited about the prospects of the platform and online investment platforms as a whole.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
I have not been with the company long enough, but if I’m looking at myself; I should have joined Max Property Group earlier 😉
What problem does your business solve?
Essentially real estate investing has always been for the well off people, as you need at least 50 or 100k to enter the market. Max Crowdfund democratises this, by allowing people to invest from as little as €100.
Once we are properly live in multiple countries, we will allow cross-border investing, which in itself has always been an issue in the real estate world as well.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
The inspiration comes from the desire to open the real estate market for everyone, and we believe we have done this with Max Crowdfund.
Hopefully our activity will be copied by many people, which in turn could turn the whole real estate world upside down.
We want to do to real estate what Uber did to the taxi world and what AirBnB did to the accommodation world.
What is your magic sauce?
Our magic sauce is our extensive international experience in real estate and our ability to speak several languages. It is very difficult to understand all the intricacies of the real estate world in multiple jurisdictions and sets us apart from our competitors.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
In the next 2 years we want to be regulated in 30+ countries (Europe, UK, NZ and AU), which will allow us to actively market our platform to both professional and retail investors.
The following three years we would also like to be live in America, both North-, Central and South America, Asia and the MENA region.
Eventually we would like to float the company, but we are several years away from that at this stage, so we will look closer into that during the 24/25 years.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
100% explaining to the regulators how blockchain technology works and how it could be applied on Max Crowdfund.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
We are now looking for 3 different people to reach out to us:
- Real estate investors and developers who are looking for funding for their projects
- Investors who are interested in investing in the investment opportunities we publish.
- Partners in countries where we have no expertise or do not speak the language who would like to start a business of their own by setting up Max Crowdfund locally.
