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AutorenbildJuan Diego Parra Castillo

Frankfurt Has It’s First Unicorn Startup



New Blog

This blog post first appeared first on old medium publication (https://medium.com/startuprad-io), and was moved to this blog with the relaunch of our website in summer 2024.


Our audience may already know that we are based in Frankfurt am Main and therefore we are happy to cover selected news from our hub here. In a cash and shares transaction insurtech Clark bought the website Finazen.de from the VC arm of German insurance giant Allianz, called Allianz X. Clark paid in shares and received an investment from new and existing investors.


Clark

Clark.de is an insurtech, helping its retail clients to keep track of their insurance policies. They also recommend different policies, as soon as their algorithms realize that a client can save money. They have been seen as a local hero of the Frankfurt startup scene for quite some time. The startup was founded in Berlin in 2015, but soon started the bulk of its operations in Frankfurt. Christopher told us in one interview that they had only a mailbox in Berlin for quite some time. Now they maintain a presence in Frankfurt and Berlin. We kept track of them since 2017 and you can learn more about the founder and the startup ideas in the two interviews, we will post below. In January 2021 we had them in our interview, talking about their 85 mn US$ fundraising.


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Clark Transaction

The valuation of Clark comes not from a normal cash investment from a VC, but a mostly shares transaction. On Tuesday, November 9th, 2021 they announced the transaction that made them a unicorn. They bought the website finanzen.de (yes, finance.de) from the venture capital arm of insurance giant Allianz, called Allianz X.


Clark paid in their own existing shares, as well as in newly generated ones. As part of the transaction, existing investors (Portag3 Ventures, White Star Capital, Yabeo, Finleap, and Tencent) and Allianz X also invested cash. The different parts of the transaction have not been disclosed, but we know that Allianz X is now the largest minority stakeholder in Clark. The investors valued the newly combined Clark at more than 1 bn US$ (according to FAZ).


There is no public statement neither from Clark nor one of their investors confirming the valuation.


Interviews With Clark’s Founder Christopher

You can learn more about the founder in our interviews here.


Here is the audio and video interview from January 2021




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The Interviewer

This interview was conducted by Jörn “Joe” Menninger, startup scout, founder, and host of Startuprad.io. Reach out to him:LinkedInTwitterEmail


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