1. Who are you?

My name ist Gernot Overbeck, I am co-founder of Fintura and CEO

2. Which services do you sell and who are your competitors?

Fintura is the platform for SME-financing. For its individual customer need like financing a car, buildings, machinery, working capital or others the SME gets in 15 min a comparison of different financing alternatives like loan, leasing, factoring, finetrading and others from different financing partners. The SME can choose the optimal financing alternative and contract the optimal optimal financing partner in a simple and easy process. Our financing partners we offer new business, process cost reduction and risk diversification. Currently SME are used to finance direly via banks, leasing companies etc. and not via a platform like Fintura. Therefore currently our main competitors are banks, leasing companies etc.

3. How did you get your start-up idea and how did you finance your start-up?

At the time we started, platforms were available in all private und business areas like travel-, hotel booking (hrs, ebookers), car- real estate purchase(autoscout24, immobilienscout24), private loans (check24, intershop), used machinery ,.. but nothing was available in the area of SME-financing. That was the reason why we set up Fintura. We are financed by private investors with finance, risk, SME-marketing, capital market, start-up and IT-background.

4. What were the biggest challenges in starting?

Definition of the business design, which reduces the major problem of our financing partners, the process costs related with SME-financing. Getting the first 3 funding partners.

5. What areas within FinTech do you personally find most interesting and why?

Fintechs have the chance to empower the end customer to do professional financial decisions in a simple and easy manner. That is what Fintura does and that is what e.g. Roboadvisors does. This empowerment of the customer is what I like

6. What opportunities do you see for FinTech start-ups in the DACH-region, and how can we help to accelerate it?

DACH is a high competitive market in the consumer as well as in the SME-area. If we succeed in Germany, we will succeed international like Aldi and like Lidl do.

7. What tip would you like to give FinTech entrepreneurs?

If you want to grow exponentially you have to have a disruptive value proposition which develops viral growth.