Martin Kassing is the founder and chief executive of Upvest, a platform founded in 2017 that enables fintechs to offer their end users the full range of investment opportunities and brokerage services securely and across international borders.
The Berlin-headquartered firm has been FCA licensed since October 2024 and raised €100m in its latest Series C fundraising round.
In this week’s Founder in Five Q&A, Kassing discusses the motivations of a successful founder, a leader he admires and his productivity hacks.
What advice would you give to a first-time founder?
There are two primary, often overlapping, motivations for becoming a founder: a powerful ambition to build a significant and successful company and a strong desire to revolutionise an outdated industry for positive change. The most successful founders typically possess both....