Family.cards successfully secures 1.2 million euros in a seed financing round
Brandenburg Kapital, OHA Osnabrück Healthcare 7 Ventures, Antler and other well-known investors from the scene have invested a total of 1.2 million euros.
Potsdam, 26 September 2024 – Family.cards, the Potsdam-based start-up specializing in the development of simple digital participation solutions for senior citizens, has successfully completed its seed financing round.
Brandenburg Kapital, OHA Osnabrück Healthcare 7 Ventures, Antler and other well-known investors from the scene have invested a total of 1.2 million euros.
Family.cards has developed a groundbreaking system that gives seniors barrier-free access to a wide range of digital services. With a simple card system that connects directly to the TV, seniors can communicate with their loved ones via video call, share photos and videos, listen to music, and even do age-appropriate exercises. Its operation is child’s play: for each function, there is a corresponding card that simply needs to be placed on the card reader to perform the desired action.
“We are very pleased with the trust and support of our new and existing investors,” says Teo Ortega, co-founder and CEO of family.cards. “This financing will enable us to further develop our innovative platform, implement new cards and features together with partners and accelerate market launch.”
“We supported family.cards in our Healthcare Accelerator and were immediately excited by the team and their product. The decision to invest was therefore easy for us,” explains OHA Managing Director Jan-Felix Simon. Katja Kühnel, Senior Investment Manager at Brandenburg Kapital, adds: “The use of digital solutions by older adults is a prerequisite for demographic change to succeed. However, existing offers are often not designed appropriately for this target group. Family.cards has set out to address this neglected great demand in the market.”
In Europe, there are 69 million seniors who have difficulty using smartphones, tablets or computers due to cognitive, physical or psychological limitations. This often excludes them from important digital opportunities such as social interaction, telemedicine, entertainment and physical activity
“There is an enormous demand for uncomplicated digital solutions for seniors, and our pre-orders and pilot projects to date clearly show that family.cards fills a large gap in the market,” says Simon Hafner, co-founder and CTO of family.cards. “With the support of our investors, we are ready to offer our platform with blanket coverage and enable seniors to participate digitally in a new way.”
About the founders:
Teo Ortega is a serial entrepreneur who has held several senior product management positions at companies such as Citibox and Softonic, and who has previously founded two companies and had an exit. Simon Hafner has a technical and engineering background and worked for several years at Zalando as a software developer and team leader.
About family.cards:
Family.cards was founded with the aim of improving the quality of life of older people through barrier-free digital participation. We see it as our mission to reduce loneliness in old age and to increase well-being through simple but effective technologies. Our device represents a completely new category that focuses on the needs of senior citizens and facilitates their access to the digital world.
As the population ages, there is a growing demand for such solutions, and we are proud to fill this gap in the market. Our vision is to establish family.cards as the standard for digital communication for seniors, thereby strengthening their connection to the world and their families.
Family.cards was founded in 2022 during the Antler Program by Teo Ortega and Simon Hafner Berlin.
About Brandenburg Kapital/ ILB
Brandenburg Kapital GmbH is a subsidiary of the Investitionsbank des Landes Brandenburg (ILB). As the venture capital arm of ILB, it has been supporting companies in Brandenburg since 1993 by acquiring equity and quasi-equity investments. As a public venture capital company, experienced lead investor and active partner, Brandenburg Kapital ensures a strong equity base for start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises in the State of Brandenburg on the basis of a stable group environment. The equity fund, which currently amounts to around 100 million euros, is available for this purpose. The funds for the Brandenburg Kapital fund, which was set up on behalf of the Brandenburg Ministry of Economic Affairs, are currently provided by the European Regional Development Fund and ILB's own resources.
With a total of eleven funds, financed by the state, the EU, KfW and ILB's own funds amounting to around 325 million euros, around 300 Brandenburg-based companies have been supported with venture capital and/or mezzanine financing over the last 30 years.
For more information, please visit: www.brandenburg-kapital.de
About OHA Osnabrück Healthcare 7 Ventures
OHA Osnabrück Healthcare 7 Ventures eGbR is a joint investment vehicle of OHA Osnabrück Healthcare Beteiligungs GmbH and individual shareholders of Beteiligungs GmbH. Since 2021, OHA has been operating exclusively in the healthcare sector with its combination of accelerator and VC. Family.cards was part of our Batch #2 and is one of four investments that we supported in the accelerator and financed with the investment company.
You can find out more about us and our almost 60 shareholders and network partners from the Osnabrück region at: https://oha.healthcare
About Antler
Antler is the global Day Zero investor, supporting and investing in visionary founders around the world. Convinced that talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not, we remove the barriers to entrepreneurship so that more people can start sustainable businesses that solve meaningful problems, drive innovation and improve lives. At our locations in 27 cities on six continents – Austin, Berlin, Bangalore, Jakarta, London, New York, Singapore, Stockholm, Sydney, etc., we work with the world's best early-stage entrepreneurs. As an extension of the founding team, our global community supports founders from the very beginning and guides them with team building, in-depth business model validation, seed funding, global scaling, and follow-on financing – with a personal passion that goes beyond traditional investments. To date, we have launched more than 1,200 startups that are driving paradigm shifts across all industries. Our goal is to support more than 6,000 startups by 2030.