Collin Crowdfund passes 1 billion mark and accelerates growth

Collin Crowdfund, a Dutch crowdfunding platform for SMEs, has reached the 1 billion euros mark in SME funding. This milestone is still almost entirely due to Dutch business loans. Meanwhile, it has also launched in Germany, and with that it expects a new growth acceleration. We spoke to the platform about these developments.

Crowdfunding as a financing solution for SMEs took a while to get started in the Netherlands, but in recent years the market has been growing fast. Thanks in part to Collin Crowdfund, which achieved the strongest growth of all platforms last year. The company also got off to a good start in 2025, with the volume of financing for SMEs now passing the milestone of 1 billion euros.

Retail investors as well as proprietary funds

So far, most of the funding comes from Dutch investors. As of this year, that is a combination of investors choosing projects themselves and funds, where investors automatically invest in several projects. On March 31, Collin Crowdfund will close its fifth SME Loans fund.

For now, it wants to open a new fund every month and use it to raise about ten million euros each time. With this amount, it can funnel about a quarter of new projects, indicates Jeroen ter Huurne, general manager at Collin Crowdfund. “This ratio currently feels good. This way, the money from funds can be invested quickly so that the interest-free period remains limited, and there is also enough room for investors who want to choose projects themselves.”

‘We are getting more and more confidence from investors, through retail investments and with our funds’

However, the option to choose projects is under some pressure. Projects are often funded quickly. “We see that we are getting more and more confidence from investors in recent years. Both through individual investments, as with our own funds. So it is up to us to expand the volume responsibly again this year,” Ter Huurne points out.

‘Germany can bring acceleration’

He expects that the platform will continue growing this year, in part because it is now also operating in Germany. It has recently launched there, and at the time of writing the counter is ‘only’ at over 5 million in funded capital. Ter Huurne does not expect that this will last long. “I was in Düsseldorf last week and at that time we already had about 35 million euros in the pipeline. My estimate is that we will offer about half of that on our platform within a month.”

‘Some 35 million euros are already in the pipeline in Germany’

With that, the company is off to a flying start, although that was the ambition, Ter Huurne explains.  “Of course, you cannot compare this start in Germany with that in the Netherlands eleven years ago. The market is more mature and we now have the experience of a billion in financing. In addition, Germany is easily five times larger than the Netherlands, so there are a lot of opportunities.”

‘We want to reach the next billion by 2027’

Because of this, the team immediately set itself an ambitious target of 100 million in German financing by 2025. “Because valuations of German real estate are somewhat more in flux than in the Netherlands, we do have to be very critical. In addition, we still need to build brand awareness in Germany. But I am convinced that the advisors there will also quickly figure out what can or cannot be done with us, and then our volumes can increase quickly.”

This year’s ambitions are high and Ter Huurne is not leaving it at that. “We are very proud to have reached the milestone of 1 billion euros. In total, it took us about 11 years to do that. Our ambition now is to double this volume in the next 2 years. At the beginning of 2027, we want to tap the 2 billion euro mark, thanks in part to the volumes we will achieve in Germany.”