startups And Financing
Combining sports, technology, and investment, Nordensa empowers fans to support young, talented football players while sharing in their success. By connecting players with European clubs and leveraging community-driven funding, Nordensa is bringing a new era in sportstech.
Adrian Docea, founder and visionary behind Nordensa, has over two decades of expertise as a brand strategist and serial entrepreneur. Known for his storytelling prowess and passion for innovation, Adrian is committed to creating platforms that unite creativity and impact. With Nordensa, he wants to transform the sports world—he’s opening the door for fans to become active participants in shaping the future of football.
1. What inspired you to create Nordensa?
The potential for scalability is amazing. This market is bigger than any other market on planet Earth. Can you believe that football is actually the world’s largest addressable market? 4 billion people who happen to love one thing. And they have smartphones, so we can easily reach them. The potential is huge: several unicorns have already been created in this space lately. Companies like Socios and Sorare used to be worth a few millions 5 years ago. Now they’re worth more than €3 billion. Each.
I surrounded myself with top brains from the industry. Colleagues, advisors, investors from Bayern, Barcelona, Porto. My first advisor and one of the shareholders is the former Chief Scout of Bayern München’s academy. Our legal expertise is from FC Barcelona. Our CTO is from Facebook London. Our creative director, from Saatchi. Our marketing advisor, from Manchester City. And so on. It’s easy to be optimistic about building the next unicorn when you’re surrounded by very smart people.
2. How does Nordensa’s platform connect talented football players with European clubs, and what makes it a game-changer in the sportstech industry?
Nordensa built something truly unique: it’s the only fan-ownership platform in the world. There are hundreds of fan-engagement platforms out there (football games, betting, content, merchandise). They offer entertainment but not ownership. There’s only one platform that offers real ownership in football: Nordensa. The business model is unique. It was designed to offer a win-win-win solution: clubs get free access to the young talent, athletes get a transfer to a better club and fans get a percentage of the athlete’s future income. Win-win-win.
3. What opportunities do fans have to engage with players and clubs through Nordensa?
There are 3 interesting new features scheduled to be launched next year: one allows fans to interact directly with the athletes. The other one allows fans to invite their friends in and create communities of backers. The last one allows football fans to be part of the scouting process - a dream come true for many football fans.
4. With Nordensa offering up to 100x returns for backers, how do you ensure transparency and success in the funding process?
The entire fiscal & legal framework has been developed by experts from Deloitte, together with Wouter Lambrecht, one of the top sports lawyers on the continent - previously at FC Barcelona, FIFA, UEFA, The Court of Arbitration for Sport and the former Head of Legal of the European Clubs Association. There’s no crypto, no trading, no unnecessary complexities. It’s an open, transparent and solid legal & fiscal framework, designed to be 100% compliant with the EU and FIFA legislation.
5. What challenges did you face in building Nordensa?
We’re a European company but we have an American mindset: go big or go home. We have the first-mover advantage. We invented something that never existed before in the history of football. We have to make the most of this advantage before we see any competition in this space. Our main challenge is to scale up faster. We’re not concerned about raising money - we already raised more than €1,6M in the worst year for fundraising in a decade.
Raising money is not the problem. We can raise money because it’s a unique project with a good chance to build a unicorn. The challenge is to raise money fast enough and scale up as fast enough. With the Series A coming next year, we’re planning to cross the ocean and get American sportstech VCs on board. Their appetite for investing in bold, innovative projects is vastly superior to what we normally see here in Europe. For now, most investors in Nordensa are from the UK, Denmark and Romania.
6. How is Nordensa shaping the future of sports investment?
We are pioneers. The first and only fan-ownership platform in the world for football. We have seen successful fan-ownership platforms in other spaces - such as music and education - and even in sports: tennis, golf, motorsports, baseball. None in football, though. Which is strange because football is bigger than all the other sports combined. We are indeed shaping the future of football.
When top publications such as Marca - the most important Spanish-language sports newspaper in the world - and Daily Mail - the most read newspaper on Earth - both allocate full-pages to cover a Romanian tech startup changing the sports industry, you know that things are getting serious. Our story was covered by more than 50 publications from all over the world, and we never had to pay a penny for this. Journalists want to write about us because we’re building something completely different.
7. What are the next big milestones on Nordensa’s roadmap?
We’re planning to add new types of football assets next year: we will allow fans to invest in football academies and football clubs, not just in football players. Imagine having a portfolio of investments: owning shares in a football academy in Japan, a football club in Romania and a bunch of young, talented players from Senegal and Ecuador. And you can invite your friends to invest together and discuss your investments and interact with athletes, academies and clubs directly. It’s a bit like playing a fantasy football game, only for real.
8. For investors, why is now the right time to support Nordensa?
It’s not only the right time but the only time to join our journey to build the next sportstech unicorn. This is a late-Seed round, where angel investors - big and small - are welcome to join the company. Next year we’ll be preparing for Series A, led by sportstech VCs from the US, UK and EU. Angel investments will no longer be possible, unfortunately. Nordensa has doubled its value twice since the project started and we raised more than €1,6M from angel investors from all over Europe. We expect our valuation to double once again by Series A. This is the perfect time for angel investors to join our journey.
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