Owlin Raises $3.5M

Owlin, the Amsterdam-based startup helping finance professionals monitor their portfolio proactively, continuously, and in real-time, has secured $3.5m from Velocity Capital FinTech Ventures.

Founded in 2012, Owlin offers a news analytics tool that allows finance professionals to add news and unstructured data to their risk monitoring. The tool aggregates insights from all types of online sources, including traditional media, corporate and government publications, academia, blogs, annual reports, specialist sites and forums. News flows are customizable and can be ranked by volume, delta or relevance, and the startup serves clients such as Deutsche Bank, ING and KPMG.

The startup had a fair share of challenges early on – two of its initial founders left when the company faced a hurdle after their initial seed-investor went bankrupt, defaulting on their funding commitment. However, the remaining team bootstrapped their way to profitability. Following the investment, Owlin plans to accelerate its growth internationally, especially in the UK and the US.

“We are delighted with this financial injection from Velocity. Owlin is gaining a lot of traction especially in the financial sector, and it has become clear that rather than merely solving an information problem, we help our clients make their risk models more data driven, accurate, timely and useful. Our mission is to shape a better informed world and we continue to do that with- and for our clients.” – Owlin’s CEO Sjoerd Leemhuis.