Ventures
We are often offered a number of highly attractive opportunities that do not fit into one of our defined funds. We place these opportunities in Ventures. The Ventures fund is 100% owned by the holding and is managed by the holding. Most of the participations revolve around consumer products that have a highly unique proposition that we can leverage quickly. The participations in this fund are heavily scrutinized and have a short exit timeline.
All other ventures that offer online and/or offline consumer products and services have been translated into the funds displayed in the menu.
Showcase: Zecco
Zecco.com is a new paradigm of a financial website centered on Zero commission trading and an informed, engaged, and democratic community of investors. Zecco.com offsets the cost of offering free trades by maximizing its revenue from interest accrued from margin loans, broker accounts and additional premium financial services.
The trading experience offered through Zecco.com is further enhanced by a website that blends other free services including financial blogging, discussion forums, and up-to-the-minute financial news into a seamless web 2.0 experience.
In an unique twist, Zecco. com shares advertising revenue with users who blog on the site as a way to continually improve the site’s content. “Think of Zecco.com as the intersection where online brokerage meets Yahoo Finance and MySpace,” says Jeroen Veth, CEO. “We believe investors want to share ideas and opinions – and we want to make it possible for anyone – customer or not – to do that on our website. In fact, we even offer to share advertising revenue with users who blog on our site.”
Zecco.com caused a stir on Wall Street when it went live in October 2006. Proving there is such a thing as a free lunch, and free trading, Zecco handed out free hot dogs to traders, with extensive coverage in a series of reports on financial network CNBC. An average of 1000 new accounts are opened per day.
The ever increasing Zecco community is coming to life. Its forums contain many interesting, relevant and entertaining discussions.