The story of Investmint is really a tale of two friends, thinking the same thing and not telling each other about it - until one day they told each other about it.

The story starts with Gareth - while running his business he was confronted by SMEs that were struggling to get access to the finance they needed to grow their business to the next level. These businesses had great products and could show demand, but were being held back because they couldn’t access the funds to meet the demand.

To solve this, Gareth contacted a few people and clubbed together the money to buy a few invoices, to providing a small business and its project with a financing solution. Fast forward a few months and word had gotten out - borrowers were coming back for more funding and the investors were delighted with their returns.

Then one Saturday morning on a group bike ride, Gareth and Chris started chatting and the little side project came up casually, but after that, neither thought much more of it for a while.

At this stage, Chris was finishing his degree at UCT and planning his next move. He happened to attended a lecture on the possibilities of FinTech and just like that, an idea struck.

Chris invited Gareth for dinner one night and presented his plan - he just needed to scale the idea and create a platform to put the plan into place. He was brimming with excitement as he took Gareth through the presentation, but throughout his demonstration, it was all Gareth could do not to laugh out loud. When Chris had finished, he was met with a grinning Gareth.

“What do you think, G?”

“It’s a great idea. So great in fact, that I’ve started already. Last week.”

To say Chris was devastated was an understatement, but Gareth had an idea that would suit everyone and invited Chris to be part of the team. And hopefully, the rest will (as they say) be history...