Republic Europe (2025 Update) – still on fire after 5 years?

Republic Europe at a glance

The star rating reflects my impression of the provider after investing with them since 2019.

Category	Crowdfunded Private Equity
Country of origin	United Kingdom (offers are mostly denominated GBP, some also in Euros)
Geographical focus	United Kingdom and European Union
Minimum investment	£10, but always a multiple of the share price. If the share price is £3, minimum investment for that startup will be £12.
Terms	Investments can only be sold in the event of an “exit” (e.g. company goes public or is sold to another company). There is no timeframe when this could happen or if it ever happens. Private equity investments are high risk!
Cost	Republic Europe does not charge investment fees but takes a hefty cut once the investors sell their shares at a profit. But hey, they helped you to make that profit in the first place, so that’s only fair!
Internal Rate of Return (IRR)	IRR of my own portfolio with the provider over the last 5 years: -3.76%
Referral programme	Currently none
Similar offers	Crowdcube.com

*based on investments’ current valuations; including fees, exits and losses from defaults, as of Sept 2025. Please note that the IRR is merely intended to give you a real-life view of how an actual user’s portfolio (mine) developed over time. Yours could look better or worse, depending on the investments you choose.

Private Equity – Impact Investing at its best?

Are you still dreaming of investing in the next big thing before it becomes big? Me too! But unless you had a friend of family member with a really good idea, an equity investment (meaning you own part of the company) in a non-tradeable company was all but impossible – until the likes of Seedrs, Republic, Crowdcube and others came along. In this post, I will describe and review Republic Europe, which was known as Seedrs before it was bought by Republic in 2021.

Through Republic/Seedrs, I have invested in 17 promising companies over 6 years – are they still sparkling as ever? Or has the shine come off over the years?

If you’re not familiar with equity crowdfunding, do check out the paragraph I wrote on it here.

Republic Europe is not a sustainable investment platform per se, but regularly funds startups that pride themselves of being green or social. Still, compared to my first review a few years ago, there is a noticeable drop in sustainable startups, perhaps reflecting the more challenging environment.

According to Republic Europe, their mission is “empowering everyone to build a portfolio of meaningful investments.” What this means for you as a potential investor is that you can invest in an early stage company before it (hopefully) becomes a big hit – and therefore achieve large returns.

By far the most prominent company to raise money on Republic Europe when it was still called Seedrs is Revolut, a British fintech startup, now valued in the billions. Revolut was so successful that Seedrs had to exclude it from some analyses of its portfolio performance to avoid skewed results. Other companies are more modest in size, such as Riversimple, a maker of small Hydrogen cars with a service-based business model or NOVA innovation, a developer of tidal energy. Curiously, a total of 3 football clubs are currently raising funds as well.

Republic Europe is based in the UK with offices in London and Portugal. This shows in the startups they help funding: at the time of writing, 17 of their 22 investment opportunities are based in the UK, with the remaining from other EU countries.

Letting the cat out of the bag: The pitch.

Each start-up raising money on Republic Europe has their own page to give you an overview and to pitch their idea following a set pattern. The top of the page shows the startups funding target and how much has already been pledged by investors. Once the limit is reached, the company’s owners can decide to stop and call it a success – or they can go into overfunding. This means they give away a higher percentage of their stake in the company in return for more capital. How much equity is up for sale is also mentioned. If the company interests you but you’re not quite ready to invest yet, you can click the Follow button to receive updates on the campaign’s progress.

Further below is where it gets interesting. The pitch starts with a short video in which the team energetically explains why their idea will change the world. Below, you’ll find details on their product or service, strategy, what they have achieved so far and the team behind it all. This gives you a rough idea, but not enough reason to put your money in it. Before you even think about doing so, find out as much about the company as you can. This starts with the “pitch deck”. Available under the “documents” tab, this short presentation includes info on the company’s financials and strategy.

Critical questions benefit everyone

But what I find most valuable is the “discussions” tab. This is where Republic Europe stands out from the crowdfunding crowd in my opinion. Here, investors can ask all sorts of questions, regarding competition, intellectual property or other things they deem relevant. I make it a point to ask for a company’s environmental credentials, if they don’t mention anything in the pitch deck. Some investors are quite critical, which is good for everyone else, too. If the company’s response is unconvincing, they will point that out, potentially raising a red flag for other investors. Fortunately, this doesn’t happen too often. Replies often come quick and from the founders directly, sometimes surprisingly thorough.

I see two reasons for this lively discussion. First, companies funding on Republic Europe must already have a certain track record. They have already dealt with many of these questions before. Second, one core value added by Republic Europe is the due diligence they conduct. As one founder assured me, claims made by a business seeking funding are verified by Republic Europe. For instance, if they boast about lower CO2 emissions than competing services, they must provide evidence.

Still, a few startups leave valid questions unanswered for several months. Whether this means they have no good answer or are just busy growing their business is hard to say.

How investments work on Republic Europe

Properly understanding private equity investments is somewhat more challenging than investing in regular shares. I will not go into the details of overfunding or company valuation. If these mechanics interest you, check out their excellent Help Section.

After setting the amount you want to invest in a given company, you will be asked to pay by card or via bank transfer. From then on, you will start receiving updates about the campaign, but also new questions being asked. It can take anywhere between a few weeks and a few months before you actually receive your share certificate as a PDF.

So now that you’re a proud owner of a piece of startup – what now?

Now you will receive regular shareholder updates directly from the investee. This allows you to follow your company’s progress and challenges. Regularity of these reports varies starkly: Some post an update every few months, others maybe once a year. So mostly, it’s time to wait. For a long time. What you’re waiting for is for the company to “exit”, meaning for a buyer to show up and purchase the shares from the existing investors at a higher price. This will take several years at least and is by no means guaranteed to happen. Check out this article to learn more.

Key question: How patient are you?

Waiting that long for a shot at a good return? Sounds crazy. But if you happen to be a crazy person, you might nevertheless want to invest in more cool startups. At some point your Republic Europe portfolio might look something like this:

While the pie chart is self-explanatory, the IRR (internal rate of return) is not. How can there be a return if you sit on these shares for several years? Part of the IRR shown on the above picture is due to currency fluctuations. I invested in GBP (£) but am displaying the value in EUR. But there’s another reason. Say you invested £180 in 2019 in The Cheeky Panda, a company producing toilet paper from Bamboo, at a share price of £18. Toilet paper being a precious commodity in 2020, The Cheeky Panda is growing and requires more capital to expand. So they launched another funding round, but at a higher share price of £36, owing to their success in the last year. Republic Europe takes these new valuations into account and now values your investment at £360. The value of your portfolio has increased.

For a share of a publicly traded company this would mean I can now sell my shares at a profit. But this is private equity, so you have to wait for the company to exit – or go find yourself a buyer. And this is where the Secondary Market comes in.

The secondary market, a mini stock exchange

The secondary market is an important feature of any investment that you cannot easily trade on a public stock exchange. It allows you to trade shares with other Republic Europe investors, adding flexibility to an otherwise very rigid investment. The main benefits are:

• Sell your shares if you need the money back sooner than expected
• Diversify your portfolio by buying shares of companies that have raised capital on Republic Europe in the past
• Buy more shares of companies you have already invested in but that you have grown to love more over time

When you decide to sell shares, you can also set the price at which you want to sell. Think the company is a hot ticket? Then you can try to sell at a higher place than its current valuation. Maybe you’ll find a buyer who missed out on the last official round? Need the money back sooner or have you lost faith in the company? You can also sell at a discount. Because the baseline is always the company’s current valuation, you don’t necessarily lose money. You can still make a profit if the company has raised more money at a higher price in the meantime.

But does the secondary market work as intended?

I have traded only once when I discovered that Abundance Investment (see separate article) had previously raised via Republic Europe. I thought it would be fun to own part of the platform I’m investing with. The process is straightforward and similar to buying shares on Republic Europe during funding rounds. The only difference is that the seller has to confirm his or her willingness to sell before the shares are transferred.

After losing faith in Abundance (I will post an update soon), I am now trying to sell the shares again, but I’ve been trying for months now and nobody was ever interested. That’s to show that you shouldn’t count on the secondary market, also because Republic Europe can suspend trading in a share without any reason and at their own discretion.

“Read before investing”: My experience with Republic Europe

Private equity investing is super fun! Invest in companies at the forefront of technological and societal change? Check! Potential for stellar returns? Check! According to their own Portfolio Analysis from 2023, the performance for all investments on Republic Europe up to the end of 2022 was 12.91% a year. That’s pretty neat. But a second figure is just as telling: the top 10% of investors with more than 20 companies in their portfolio made 45.5% per year – that’s a huge difference, suggesting that many also made a lot less or, like me, lost money!

So, nothing in life is certain. The market for startup investments has its ups and downs. It was in an “up” during my first review in 2021. Now, in 2025 it is rather in a “down”, leading to lower valuations in general (I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Republic Europe hasn’t produced a new report since the market has gone down…). And, of course, many startups go bust eventually.

So, what happened to the 17 startups I invested in?

Yeah, about that… Out of the 17 young companies I funded over the last 6 years…
…5 have already dissolved
…5 are “inelligible” for trading on the second market. This does not necessarily mean they’re in trouble: Republic states that elligibility is determined at their discretion. But I’m already bracing for bad news
…3 have shown an unrealised return of >5% per year (i.e., what you could expect on the stock market). Two of these were around 15% per year.
…none have had an exit situation where my shares were bought out by new investors at a much higher price.

As you can see, the good performance of a small part of the portfolio doesn’t make up for the bankrupcies of the others

While some investments might double or triple in value, others might never actually take off or even go bust. This is why Republic Europe advises investors to avoid large individual investments and to diversify instead. Diversification is always important, but even more so with high-risk investments such as private equity. At one point, their official recommendation was to invest in 10-15 different startups to benefit from the high growth potential while keeping risk in check. Their analysis also found higher returns for more digitised startups as well as those with a B2B (business-to-business) focus, as opposed to selling to consumers directly.

The bottomline is: don’t invest more in startups than you can afford to lose. You will be fine if you pick just one or two young firms that you want to support with a small sum. Make sure you are well diversified across other asset classes, be they conventional or unconventional.

So it’s a gamble – but is it fun? Hell, yeah!

One of the best moments of my impact investing journey was when I saw a brand I invested in through Republic Europe, Cheeky Panda, in a regular store. I helped make that happen!! Ok, just a tiny bit, but it was awesome nevertheless! Needless to say I’ve automatically become a brand ambassador.

As it happens, Cheeky Panda is also the top performer in my portfolio. And I still want to try out Much Better Adventures, a tourism company dedicated to outdoor adventure tours! Not because of the investor discount, but because it seems like they’re genuinely doing a good job and I’m excited to become a customer as well. But I’m still sad that Circa5000, a startup providing sustainable investments went bust. Good thing I can still invest sustainably in the stock market with Inyova!

Conclusion: Pros & Cons of investing with Republic Europe

I had a lot of fun investing with Republic Europe. It feels good investing in solar projects it Nigeria through Trine, but I will probably never see the results of my investments. With Republic Europe, I literally only have to walk down the street to my local organic store!

But apart from the excitement, investing should be about more than throwing money after cool stuff. Private Equity is risky as hell. Diversification across 17 individual investments was not enough, it seems, to find enough winners to compensate for the inevitable losers. Maybe you’ll be luckier than I was – but only do it if you’re ready to consider every investment a donation!

Pro: Broad range of really cool investments, that could actually change something. I mean, where else can you invest in tidal power or upside-down houses? Ok, maybe the last one is a bit silly, but there is a wealth of bright ideas available that can make a real impact for our society and its fun to just browse, investing (or maybe: donating) a few bucks here and there. Some of these ideas might not get enough money to grow any other way, which means YOU are actually making an impact as well. And who knows, maybe you will actually hit those triple digit returns!

Pro: Due diligence and interaction with founders. So far, I haven’t come across anything fishy on Republic Europe (there are some rather negative reviews on Trustpilot but most seem very ill-informed). Still, never switch of your brain. Instead, make use of the opportunity to ask the founders questions (many answer even stupid ones). Read other investors’ questions and if the replies don’t satisfy you, don’t invest.

Pro/Con: The secondary market might seem like a nice-to-have at first glance. And it is, when it comes to buying. But the possibility to sell your investments earlier than planned is very important when it comes to trusting an investment in the first place. Bear in mind that there is no certainty that you can actually sell via the secondary market, especially if the company you’re selling is in trouble. You still might lose the money you invested.

Con: High risk requires good diversification which takes time. Being serious about investing in private equity and investing more than a few hundred bucks means you need to read up diligently on every investment. And not just the material provided, but also doing your own research. If you’re not willing to do that, stick to small investments that you don’t care to lose – and then it’s questionable if it’s still worth your time.

Con: Need for high diversification requires considerable effort and money. To achieve the spread over 10-15 companies they recommend, you need to read just as many company pitches and maybe do some additional bit of research. So be prepared to invest your time, as well as your money (you’re not going to spend 2h of research and then only invest 100€, are you?)

Are you hyped for more Impact Investing?

Then head on over to my overview of options I’ve tried and reviewed!