Ulule Has Now Acquired the Crowdfunding Platform KissKissBankBank

Ulule, a pioneering crowdfunding platform in France created in 2010, has just made official the acquisition of KissKissBankBank (the platform, not the group) from La Banque Postale. The amount of the transaction has, of course, not been disclosed.

This acquisition comes one month after the sale of Lendopolis to Lendosphère, a subsidiary of KissKissBankBank & Co. Other assets such as Microdon or the media Youmatter are still hosted within the KissKissBankBank & Co group, owned by La Banque Postale, other announcements should be made.

In the meantime, Ulule is delighted with this acquisition. An alliance that is all the more natural since it almost happened a few years ago.

Ulule has just joined forces with KissKissBankBank. Two historical figures in participatory financing in France are therefore making common cause.

On the Ulule side, the story begins in 2010 when Arnaud Burgot (CEO), Alexandre Bucherot (President) and Thomas Grange (CTO) launched the crowdfunding platform project.

“At the beginning, we developed thanks to business angels which allowed us to break even for the first time in 2013. In 2016, with many technical deployment projects and international ones, we chose to raise 5 million euros from Citizen Capital, Ternel (ex-Capital Croissance) and to a lesser extent BNP Paribas Développement but which is now supporting many projects,” said Arnaud Burgot, CEO and therefore co-founder of Ulule.

The platform Ulule is taking advantage of this to accelerate developments, particularly in Europe. “Today, even if we still have projects with Italy, Spain, the Netherlands… We are more of a Franco-French company. A crowdfunding platform requires meeting a lot of compliance rules, respect for customers, regulations (Editor’s note: Sepa transfer for example)…”

In 2013, Ulule began a phase of diversification in relation to pure collection by launching partnerships with companies in order to support them in their search for visibility through campaigns for example. “In 2020, we became a training organization with the possibility of organizing skills assessments. And, in 2021, we launched a marketplace showcase with Maïf so that our creators can also sell their products.”

At the moment, the pure “crowdfunding” activity represents “only” 40% of Ulule, which does not reveal its turnover

In 2023, the crowdfunding part raised 31 million euros from a tripartite audience divided equally between Entrepreneurs, Associations and Groups carrying out Cultural projects (average amount collected around 7000 euros).

“The crowdfunding part remains a formidable customer acquisition tool in our business! In fact, we had been looking at each other with KissKiss for a while. There were even more serious discussions with Vincent Rircordeau (co-founder of KissKissBankBank, about 5 years ago, for a reverse operation. “

In 2017, KissKissBanKBanK was acquired by La Banque Postale which, after having supported it in external growth operations, is gradually separating itself from the activities of this branch.
Ulule in its crowdfunding version generates 2 to 3 times more volume than KissKissBankBank.

” This merger really makes sense. We are very close in our activities and we will be able to optimize synergies both in terms of the deployment of the technical platform and in terms of everything that is understanding and application of compliance rules.”

The two brands will continue to co-exist. “We will launch new projects by the first quarter of 2025 and it makes sense to do so with a different brand.”

Together and since their inception, the two platforms have helped finance 80,000 projects via 480 million euros collected in 15 years from a community of 9 million people.

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(Featured image by RDNE Stock project via Pexels)

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First published in Finyear. A third-party contributor translated and adapted the article from the original. In case of discrepancy, the original will prevail.

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