Coiniverse Aims to Connect Every Collector

Mikko Sievänen.

Q: Firstly, could you tell us a little about your background.

A: My background is really in internet and all digital business. I’ve been working with these types of services for quite a long time and building B2B and B2C e-commerce sites in both retail and telecom sectors, but also in business services.

What really caught my attention here with Coiniverse is that customer centricity and how you build services with customers as the leading idea. That is what Coiniverse has been doing from the beginning and I joined them in summer 2021. I spent a couple of years with the Mint of Finland, and as this evolved, we then decided to make this a growth startup.

Q: Congratulations on the successful spin off of Coiniverse, what prompted this move?

A: Coiniverse has been getting great traction and there are now many registered users on the platform, with our customer ratings constantly rising. There is a product market fit already in existence. As we have been discussing with the mints and industry actors, it seems that there is a need for this type of service that collects information and all the players into one place.

With the incorporation we see that this type of independent company can move a bit faster and be even more responsive to customer needs, and of course have access to different financing sources.

Q: What is the ownership of Coiniverse, and how will its development be funded?

A: Most of the ownership is with the funding team, with the five people that have been building Coiniverse from the beginning.

Mari Metso, our Product Owner, has worked at the Mint of Finland for close to 10 years, and Emilia Lahtinen (Head of Sales) has been at the Mint for nearly 15 years. We also have Juha Pihkakoski (Chief Growth Officer), our growth and marketing specialist, and Roman Mikstais (Chief Technology Officer), who has been building the architecture and the background of the service from the start.

The Mint of Finland is still with us as a minority shareholder, with 20% ownership. We are now looking at that growth curve, so to get financed by venture capital companies it sets a limit for the ownership that public or government-owned organisations can have in this type of setup.

It’s great that the Mint of Finland is on board with us and will continue to be in the background. Jonne Hankimaa, CEO of the Mint of Finland, is on our Advisory Board and we have just agreed that Peter Vesterbacka will join us as an advisor. He’s very good on building brands, app growth, and also building communities, which is great news for our customers too.

We are now going to collect money from the investor market. We are backing the development with loans, traditional loans but also with different types of development grants and funding from government and other public sources. There are lots of new opportunities to get funding for the growth.

Q: What aims does the new company have, both in terms of company progression and goals in the numismatics sector?

A: As a company, one of the leading aims is to have the best collector app on the planet. Numbers wise, we now have 110,000 registered users on the platform, and our aim is to reach 1 million registered users by the end of next year. That’s the growth curve we are expecting and aiming for.

There is still a lot to do with the application, we’ve been building for two years and there are still many things to do. We’ve now started taking this into the direction of shopping for commemorative coins, to make it easier for collectors and users to socialise more, and then start buying and selling coins between each other soon.

At the same time, another aim is getting more member mints on board. We currently have nine, and have just signed the tenth mint, which we will announce in the near future. We are in discussions with several others and I’m sure we will get many of the mints on board during next year.

As we get the user base growing, new services introduced, and being the trusted community among the collectors, we expect Coiniverse to break even financially in a couple of years’ time.

In terms of numismatics, the goal is to make people more interested in coins, about the history and stories. That is why we have developed the coin scanner, and then renewed it during the Spring to get better recognition of the coins. Our vision is to see the average user scanning the change that they receive from the cashier to find out more about the coins.

In this way, we hope to start shifting people to collecting first the circulating coins, and then maybe into other collectibles afterwards. I think we have a fair number of these new collectors on board already, and that’s really one of the main things, getting new generations interested and new people interested in in coin collecting.

We have an ambition to share and launch new content for those more experience collectors and are developing paid subscription services, ‘the Coiniverse Club’, with different content. We also have the first version of the coin value estimation, which is currently under heavy development.

Through this getting people interested, or more interested, in coins, I think we can develop the businesses of the mints and other industry actors.

Q: Congratulations also on your appointment as CEO of Coiniverse. Do you have any personal goals for where you would like to take the company?

A: The first goal would be for Coiniverse to be a really agile modern company, and that we keep on listening to the customers, collectors, and mints, and that all the development is based on the customer insights that we have. Being really customer centric is one of the key points, as I mentioned earlier.

The other goal is based more on the company culture. I want us to be curious all the time, constantly looking for concepts or technologies that we could add on to the service and meet our user needs. For example, utilising a conversational AI for the users to learn from the coins through questioning, rather than searching and clicking.

By being on top of technology and being modern in that way, I’m sure we can then also attract the best talent from the market to build the service further. Coin collecting may not be at the top of developers’ minds, but there are a lot of possibilities and it’s a really interesting market.

Q: As Coiniverse is an app-based platform, do you see the digital aspect of numismatics as just as, or perhaps more important, than the physical side?

A: You cannot have the digital aspect without the physical coin being there. We aim to be complementary for business and view physical coins and the digital service as being hand in hand.

The two aspects of numismatics are combined. Coiniverse feedback notes that whilst it is a nice looking and easy-to-use service, it’s also building on traditional coin collecting. It’s not something out of this world but provides new tools and adds to the traditional collecting experience. Users love the idea that they can carry their collection with them all the time, receive extra data, and make that experience more fun.

As mentioned earlier, we are building on this hub for collectors to find new commemorative coins and then, in future, have the marketplace to buy or sell these coins and socialise with other collectors.

We have been exploring the possibility of providing more sophisticated estimates of physical coins using tools like Coiniverse, or through involving the community more in the process. I think there is so much untapped potential in this field.

Q: How important is the numismatics side of the coin industry, looking at the sector as a whole – and in comparison to circulating coinage?

A: Market studies show that many people are already investing in coins, not just as collectibles but also as investment objects. With this digital layer, we can bring a lot of new collectors into the field and make the whole hobby more known to the general public.

There really is a new era for collectable coins forming in the coming years with these tools and new services that can be offered, so it can be a much more mainstream hobby. That side of the business is going to grow in importance.

When speaking to our users about circulation coinage and usage of physical money in the future, the answers from them are similar to those in the industry, that there is probably going to be a little less coins and money in circulation. Their concern has been that there will be less to collect in the future.

However, these types of services enable you to find different coins to collect and take your hobby in a new direction. I also think also that these collectors are very open to trying new things and are not necessarily so tight with the tradition.

That’s great for any growth too, they can buy new things and try new things.

Q: What do you see as the current or most important trends in the collector space, and where do you see coin collecting heading in the next few years?

A: Collecting in general is the rising trend, and with the economic situation, people are also investing in coins and buying gold and silver coins specifically. These services, Coiniverse included, provide tools for people to understand coins more and help them know what they are buying. Coin values, investing, and then of course providing this platform for buying and selling, add up to that growth of those collecting.

Another trend is the demand for the more modern coins, not necessarily those really expensive older coins. With these new collectors, there are also more opportunities with less traditional items such as the 3D or coloured coins. Our users are ready to explore these, as long as the story of the coin is right and it is relatively affordable.

Q: Finally, where do you see, or hope to see, Coiniverse over the next few years?

A: The social connection is one of the key aspects, and we are working on getting that into the heart of Coiniverse in the future. An experienced collector from Paris could be helping someone in the United States with how and where to start collecting, for example.

The dream state for us is to be in the pocket of every collector, to recognise coins, help to find information, trade and to be inspired. There are 300 million collectors, and the ultimate aim is to be on the phone of every one.

We also really hope to grow that user base and help mints and the industry serve customers even better. The main goal for us is to help collectors and help the mint industry to make better business.