Family finance app Nosso raises a $2.8m Seed round by Octopus Ventures and Anthemis

By Joy Dumasia

Nosso, a FinTech helping parents invest and plan for their children’s financial futures, announces it has raised $2.8 million capital. The round was led by Octopus Ventures and Anthemis with participation from additional investors, including Entrepreneur First, Ventures Together, Errol Damelin, Tracy Doree and Peter Hetherington.

The financial services industry is dominated by single-user products designed for individuals managing money on their own. And whilst this works for a certain group of people, more and more digitally native parents want a more collaborative approach to wealth management.

Nosso addresses this by offering children investment accounts that two parents can track, manage and contribute to, together. The app also goes one step further by providing each user with a unique contribution link to share with anyone. This allows grandparents (and other family and friends) to contribute directly and seamlessly with no additional paperwork or even the need to open a Nosso account. Family members can also leave messages and pictures with their contributions allowing them to pass down memories and wealth to future generations.

The funding announced will allow Nosso to continue expanding its unique product offering for families. Whilst the app will enable parents to invest through tax-efficient Junior ISAs (in the child’s name) or General Investment Accounts (in the parent’s name), Nosso intends to launch several new financial products regularly used in family financial planning such as more flexible Junior Investment Accounts (Bare trusts).

Nosso was founded by Youssef Darwich and Sigurjon Isaksson who met in 2020 at Entrepreneur First. Before that, Youssef was the second employee at the digital banking service Tide, and Sigurjon was an early employee at Eigen Technologies. The company has been operating in beta over the last few months, working with a group of 1000 families (95% of which are investing for their children for the very first time) to hone and build out its product offering. The app is now live and available to download on the app store and Play store.

Youssef Darwich, CEO and Co-Founder of Nosso, said: “The main hurdle for many parents to effectively save for their children’s future is a lack of awareness about what they can do and a lack of tools that help them do that easily. The money we’ve raised today is going to give us the opportunity to change this, providing better education to families and building financial products and tools solely designed for families.”

“We’ve been exploring how families collaborate around financial services for some time now. When we met Youssef and Sigurjon and saw their commitment to building products that would enable parents to build and manage wealth for their children with an opportunity for the wider family to participate, we knew it was a company we wanted to be part of. We’re excited about changing the way parents save for their children and how families support the younger generation’s financial health,” said Farhan Lalji, Anthemis.

Tosin Agbabiaka, Investor, Octopus Ventures, said: “We continue to see traditional firms in this space struggle to provide financial planning and wealth management solutions that address the needs of younger existing clients and a new generation of families. Therefore, Nosso stood out to us immediately for a number of reasons: the seamlessness way it integrates into a family’s life, the manner in which it’s transformed a traditionally ‘single-player’ approach to financial planning into a ‘multi-player’, sustainable approach, and the founders’ bold vision of democratizing intergenerational wealth transfer. As a result, we’re very proud to support Youssef, Sigurjon, and the team in building out the financial partner for every family.”