Accelerace invests in fintech startup DreamPlan

Accelerace has invested in DreamPlan, a self-service holistic financial planning platform for retail customers. DreamPlan is a recent graduate of the first cohort of the Beyond Beta accelerator program.

DreamPlan is tapping into a problem that is a headache for many of us: figuring out how to build and optimize our savings. By developing a self-service holistic financial planning platform, the fintech startup is focused on optimizing the financial life of the retail banking customer over their lifetime.

With Stine Kalmer Jørgensen in the lead as CEO and co-founder, DreamPlan is currently running a proof-of-concept project together with three banks to collect data and to validate assumptions about their product’s feasibility and usefulness. Before sealing the deal with Accelerace, the team spent 6 months talking to investors. When asked why Accelerace is a good investor for DreamPlan, Stine emphasizes the knowledge and experience that comes with accelerating hundreds of startups before them:

“With my background in the corporate banking industry, I have regularly pitched to management, but pitching to investors is a new game. Instead of having to spend time reporting, Accelerace helps us forward and helps us to push from pre-seed to Series A funding. You are able to use all the knowledge you have picked up across sectors, and it is a good fit at this stage.”

Stine Kalmer Jørgensen, co-founder and CEO

DreamPlan is a result of the insights collected throughout Stine’s career in the banking space, combined with the realization that she did not optimize her own finances. A significant number of retail banking customers in Europe are under-advised (i.e. they need professional advice and guidance but do not receive it). This results in a lack of optimization of their debt/savings and, over the course of their lifetime, they lose out on significantly higher net income. So, both on a professional and personal plan, Stine was missing a tool that presented everything related to optimizing one’s personal finances in an accessible, unbiased, and easily understandable way:

“In my conversations with financial institutions, I have always ended up saying ‘if that is what you recommend, I will go for that’. The idea came from the knowledge that I, as an educated economist, should have one of the best starting points for understanding the [financial] products, combined with the research I did within the banks (..) a big segment of Danish retail banking customers do not have a personal advisor, and if they do, it might be someone that specializes in one product category, so they will not look across the product categories.”

Stine Kalmer Jørgensen, co-founder and CEO

DreamPlan was accepted into the Beyond Beta accelerator in October 2020 and was one of sixteen startups that successfully completed the 5-month program. If you are wondering which Danish startups to watch in 2021 and onwards, add this one to your list.

About Accelerace:
Since 2008, Accelerace has supported 800+ Danish and international startups, including Trustpilot and Templafy, made 65+ pre-seed investments and matched startups with industry-leading companies such as Tetra Pak, Arla, and Elia. Accelerace is also responsible for the management of NOME (Nordic Mentor Network for Entrepreneurship), an elite mentoring program for Nordic startups within therapeutics, medical devices, diagnostics, digital health, and industrial biotech.
Accelerace Invest II is the largest Danish fund in terms of numbers of investments. By making approximately 30 new investments in pre-seed stage startups every year until 2023, the ambition is to be the most aggressive early-stage investor.