We've closed €460K from Achmea Innovation Ventures as the anchor of our pre-seed round. The total round target is €1.46M and we're talking to investors for the rest.

The announcement-shaped version of this post would tell you the number and the date and move on. I want to write the other version, which is about Achmea specifically and what working with them has been like.

Why Achmea

Achmea is one of the largest financial-services groups in the Netherlands. Their internal standards for the security and privacy of any vendor they let near their data are the kind where, if your product can't meet them, you probably don't have a real enterprise product anywhere else either. That made them, in our heads, the most honest test of the privacy claim we make.

They didn't take the story at face value. They asked the questions we'd been quietly hoping someone would ask. We didn't always have a slick answer. They were patient with that, in the way the best partners are.

What the round looks like

The commitment is structured as a convertible loan: €240K in cash and €220K in-kind. I keep telling other founders about the in-kind part. It isn't paper. It's people, time, and doors that wouldn't otherwise have opened to us.

What I keep coming back to

For a privacy-first product to be anchored by one of the largest financial-services groups in our country is a kind of vote of confidence that's hard to manufacture, and harder still to earn. I don't take it lightly. None of us on the team do.

To everyone at Achmea who took the meeting, asked the questions, made the introductions, and decided we were worth backing: thank you.

We're still in conversation with investors for the rest of the round. If you build the kind of fund where Achmea's bet would resonate with yours, our contact details are in the footer.