“Fundamentally, Nova Finance is about making really complex financial skills accessible to anyone,” says Tom Sichel, co-founder of Edinburgh-based crypto startup, Nova Finance.

Tom co-founded the company alongside Adam Greenberg with the intention of opening up crypto investing to a new wave of prospective investors.

For too long, he says, the crypto space has appeared shut off to newcomers. A strange world masked in a hazy veil of mystery – a space reserved for those in-the-know.

Tom believes initial hurdles faced by investors getting into crypto – such as setting up accounts and wallets – can appear inhibitive and limit the potential of the broader ecosystem.

And that’s just the first part of the process. Once an investor is ready to begin delving into the space and placing their bets, they’re met with a cacophony of choices and daunting financial decisions.

He saw this process first-hand when helping his father manage his Bitcoin investment several years ago. Tom says it took him “months just to explain what it is and get him set up with a Coinbase app” – and after that is when the real work began.

“During the time when I first got him into it [crypto], it was just before the bull run we embarked on. He loved it but was going crazy asking “do I sell” and asking me about new tokens – it was driving me nuts,” he says.

But after watching his father draw upon the experience he had accumulated during his time engaging in the crypto space, Tom realised that there were “millions of people out there in the same boat”.

Building Nova Finance

Tom reveals part of the initial inspiration for Nova centred around how to support people like his father to invest in these “pioneering new assets” – but in a way that’s safe, secure and without the heightened level of risk.

Central to this is automation, he explains. By automating certain processes Tom says the startup hopes to “remove the emotion” of investing, which given the recent market volatility seems understandable.

“The emotion can sometimes throw you off, especially in these markets when you might have lost 50% of what you invested,” he says. “If you can take these emotions away and stick with an investment strategy, you’re more likely to do better.”

With this in mind, the Nova Finance platform caters to two specific types of crypto investor – experienced ‘degenerates’, as they’re referred to in the DeFi space, and newcomers dipping their toes in the game.

For the former, Nova allows them to create a unique portfolio and embed their investment thesis in the programme. This, he explains, will allow them to automate aspects of their investment strategy.

“So this will cover things like automated take-profit or dollar cost averaging,” he adds. “Everything from that to things like reducing volatility or rebalancing your portfolio according to on-chain data.”

By automating investment strategies, Tom believes more experienced investors will reap huge rewards, save time and finetune their strategy based on a data-driven approach which eliminates emotion.

And there are also significant benefits for newcomers. Rather than opening the pasture gates and letting the foals roam free, Nova Finance hopes to tackle the steep learning curve beginners face by allowing them to draw upon the expertise of seasoned investors.

“This is for the people who bought their first Bitcoin on Coinbase or accumulated a bit of Ethereum. They know what DeFi is, but they’ve not really fully gotten into it yet.

“And for these people it’s about how we can remove the need to learn complex financial skills to get engaged and participate in what is essentially a massive wealth creation event.”

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To achieve this, Nova is engaging with experienced crypto investors who can use its algorithms to create portfolios that follow their approach or strategy for investing. That portfolio can then be shared with newcomers to the crypto space and enable them to invest more like an experienced person would.

“This means you can start investing in the same way that someone who’s more experienced than you. It allows you to invest like a professional,” he says.

“For us this is all about mitigating the risks when you’re first getting involved, and making these complex financial skills really accessible to anyone.”

Knowledge exchange

Fundamentally, Tom says the platform should be imagined as a collaborative environment for crypto investors, one where knowledge exchange and shared learning is embraced by all.

“You have to think of this as knowledge transfer. As an expert, I’m going to share my portfolio and all you need to do as a newcomer is just deposit, start investing and not have to learn very complicated financial skills,” Tom adds.

Notably, this isn’t just about newcomers riding on the coattails of more experienced counterparts – the seasoned investors benefit also. There’s a connected incentive woven into this.

“The experts that have created these portfolios are going to share some of the fees so they’re incentivised,” he says. “They will make more profit by sharing their investment ideas through the portfolios than if they were just going it alone.”

“They’re monetising their knowledge, whilst creating and prospering.”

Instead of attempting to explain crypto to your friends & family🤔show them.

💎Portfolios on #Nova allow you to visually display your crypto investments at a glance, & make you feel at ease when investing😎

Sign Up here👇https://t.co/QkKAJikM5C#crypto #investment #Portfolio

— Nova (@NovaFinance_) September 16, 2022

Looking ahead for Nova Finance, Tom says the protocol is currently undergoing an audit, and the firm is in the process of conducting beta testing – with the public launch expected in due course.

“Beyond that, we’re aiming for a fully functional consumer-facing application (date to be announced),” he says. “This is where we’ll have an audited version of Nova up and running. By that point, we’ll have made all sorts of tweaks and improvements based on feedback from the beta release.”

Tom notes that while this is a critical period for the startup, the team is embracing the challenge and looking forward to what lies ahead.

In the last 18 months, the firm has grown rapidly. A $3 million investment round in October 2021 accelerated expansion, and despite challenging market conditions the protocol is beginning to raise eyebrows in the flourishing Scottish crypto scene and beyond.

“Since raising the money we’re now up to 25 full-time employees. It’s an expanding team, and it’s ended up doubling in a very short space of time,” he says.

Crucially, Tom says this funding has given the startup the luxury of not being at the mercy of the market right now.

“We’re in a very bearish world where it’s quite difficult to raise capital, and a lot of people are being more cautious in the crypto space. However, with our investment in place we are working on our own road map.”

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