But for sure, the citizen of Austria has been rather successful so far in attracting investor money: Sir Ronald Cohen, Josef Ackermann and Pierre Mirabaud all lent him some money at an early stage.
Last year, Saidler got the backing of Dubai Investment Corporation. More recently, Israeli software billionaire Marius Nacht agreed to invest several million Swiss francs.
Saidler so far attracted more than 150 million francs in investments. He holds about 70 percent of Numbrs shares, moving the fintech into the proximity of a unicorn, a startup worth a billion francs – and that is a lot for Switzerland.
Setbacks
His enthusiasm also is fairly extraordinary. He built an IT development center in Zurich without earning a penny. More than 100 highly paid engineers and software developers worked on the Numbrs app, creating a mobile distribution platform.
No success without a setback: when he launched the Numbrs app as a personal finance manager in Germany in 2014, he was inundated to a degree that forced him to take it off the shelve again – a disaster by any standard. Last year Saidler had to fire almost half of his programmers because the costs got out of hand. Last week, Numbrs Chief Executive Oyvind Oanes resigned after only 18 months, putting Saidler back in charge.
Rollout in the U.K. Imminent
Numbrs however is doing fine now. Since going live last summer, it registered clients with 7.2 billion euros in assets. The platform receives more than 1 billion euros every quarter. Numbrs earns a commission on the sale of a product. Better than expected, is how a spokesperson puts it.
The launch of the app in the U.K. is imminent. The company is testing a beta version with 10,000 users. It says that it has a pipeline with several potential banking partners lined up. The further rollout across Europe, including Switzerland, is also in planning.
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