Adrian Docea, CEO and Founder of Nordensa, tells us how his startup plans to disrupt the world of football by giving fans unprecedented decision-making power.
What is Nordensa?
Nordensa is the world’s first fan-funding platform for football talent. We give fans the opportunity to bring young talent from underdeveloped countries to the clubs they love, already vetted by scouts from the Premier League and Bundesliga.
In return, they get to earn perks including a percentage of the player’s salary – which can turn into a huge profit if they do well in the first five years.
How does the platform work?
Via our app, and after agreeing a shortlist of vetted players with each club, fans are given the chance to fund their favourite one to be brought to their team on a one-year training and development programme. They do so by buying shares from the player’s contract from as little as €30 – which covers the player’s salary and expenses for the first year on behalf of the club.
After that first year, backers are entitled to 3% of the player’s salary for the next 5 years, as well as their initial investment back if the player signs to the same club they were funded for.
How did you come up with the idea?
With over 4 billion fans, football is the world’s biggest anything. There is literally nothing in the world that beats the people-gathering power, nor the fan passion, of football.
With that in mind, it seems mind-boggling that despite fan-funding or crowdfunding being such a commonplace practice in many key industries around the world, and one that’s helped to truly democratise the marketplace in the 21st century, no one is truly giving football fans the opportunity to jump on board and get involved in a way that truly makes an impact for their clubs.
Every football fan always believes that their team can do better, and that they would certainly do better if they were in charge of certain things. So what better solution than to give them that opportunity, and what better time than now?
How does Nordensa disrupt the traditional football landscape?
We’re taking something that until now was exclusively reserved for wealthy individuals and shareholders, and giving it to the fans: real financial ownership in the world of football and the power of decision making.
We’re also giving clubs the opportunity to massively extend their pool of new talent, especially those clubs who don’t have the funds or resources to scout for young players in every corner of the world.
Last but not least, we’re giving young players everywhere in the world the chance to be spotted by world-class scouts, wherever they are, giving them a much bigger shot at a professional career in football.
Ultimately though, the fate of all these elements is decided by the fans – and at no point in history have they been given this much power, until now.
When are you launching and how can fans get involved?
We’ll be launching to coincide with the summer transfer window, but fans can now sign up for the waitlist and be notified (and get early access!) when the app goes live.
Who is in your team?
We have a global team of passionate creatives and fans building the Nordensa brand and platform. We’re headquartered in Cluj-Napoca, Transylvania – affectively known as the Silicon Valley of Eastern Europe – but people in our team are based all across Europe and as far afield as Singapore, South Africa and Brazil.
Our world-class team of scouts, however, is the lifeblood of Nordensa, and we have the immense honour of working with passionate and forward-thinking scouts from Premier League and Bundesliga teams including Arsenal, Norwich City, Brentford FC and Bayern Munich, who bring their skills to spot the hottest young talent from every far corner of the world thanks to a combination of data and working alongside local scouts and agents.
What are your next plans/steps?
Go live! We’re lining up the launch to coincide with Europe’s summer transfer window, and we’re currently in discussions to bring on board as many quality teams and young players as possible for the first wave. Following the launch, our aim is to expand this to a wider number of teams not just around Europe, but also North America and beyond. We want Nordensa to be a worldwide force to be reckoned with in order to make a huge difference.
As we continue to grow, we’re also looking at new features and opportunities for fans within our platform. One key ambition is finding ways to reduce the lowest possible price for shares in a player’s contract (our goal is to bring it down to as low as $10 for the minimum price, without missing out on perks) and to create a shares marketplace where fans can trade shares in the contracts of their favourite and most promising players.
