Tokenize.it Is Becoming beel

Same company, same team, same platform, same contracts: over the coming weeks, our website, app, social media channels and documents will move to the new name and our new home at beel.com.

In this post we explain why we are taking this step, what the new name means, and what changes for our customers. The short version of that last point: nothing but the name.

Where We Come From

It started with an observation by our founder and CEO Christoph Jentzsch, who was a co-developer on Ethereum in its earliest days. Over the years, countless token projects came and went — and one insight stuck. Tokenisation is the right technology for managing company shares and cap tables. Above all for fundraising and for managing investments, from business angels through to funds.

So that is what we built: tokenised virtual shares — participation rights under German law — and we launched in a deliberately narrow niche, namely Web3 companies structured as German GmbHs. There, we became the clear number one for security token fundraising. But the niche was small, and it was time to grow.

So we opened the platform up to all German startups and abstracted away everything blockchain-related in the process: the wallet became an account, and tokens are simply virtual shares. That is where we found product-market fit. Today, more than 100 startups run their fundraising through us, and more than 600 investments have been closed on contracts we have invested heavily in — legally battle-tested, technically solid.

Why We Are Changing the Name

That success created a problem our name could not survive: most of our customers today have nothing to do with crypto. They are startups raising perfectly ordinary angel rounds. For them, "Tokenize.it" described the mechanism under the hood — not what they actually get.

Worse still, the name invited the wrong comparisons. Some investors hear "token" and think of technical complexity, or of the ICO era and everything that went wrong back then. Others filed us away as yet another crowdfunding platform — which we never were. One founder put it to Christoph Jentzsch like this: "If your name were different, I would raise on your platform tomorrow."

That sentence tipped the scales. A name frames what a company gets compared to — and ours invited the wrong frame. The honest comparison for what we do was never another token platform. It is the notary appointment. The contract process you repeat for every single investor. The SPV you set up so that ten angels fit into one line of the cap table. The effort of running a fund just to invest together. Those are the things we replace — and the name should no longer stand in the way of saying so.

To be clear: the technology has not gone anywhere. Tokenisation still powers the platform, and it is still the reason we can do things others cannot. But the rails are not the product. Nobody picks a bank because of its settlement layer. What our customers get is a round that closes in days instead of weeks — and a cap table that stays clean.

What "beel" Means

Nothing. On purpose.

beel is a short word with no meaning — yet. That is a feature. A name with meaning built into it fits what a company does today and fights what it does tomorrow. We have been through that once and have no intention of repeating it. beel is easy to pronounce in any language, came with a free .com domain and no trademark disputes — and will mean exactly what we make it mean. We do not fit into a category. We are creating one.

What beel Is

beel is the digital settlement platform for private startup investments.

We are not in the business of convincing investors about a particular startup. We take on the part everyone avoids once the handshake is done: we settle the deal that has already been agreed.

beel for Founders

The way to close an angel round: one process for all investors — whether that is three angels or thirty — no notary bottleneck, no stack of individual contracts to chase down.

beel Syndicates

For investors, this turns dealflow into carry: bring co-investors into an investment deal by deal — without setting up a fund and without a ten-year commitment.

Virtual Shares as the Foundation

Both run on our virtual shares: transferable digital shares that also cover employee participation and give investors an option to sell later on. That makes the decision to go into a private investment an easier one.

Investors notice the difference on their side of the table too. Thomas Schmidt, Business Angel of the Year 2022, after investing via the platform: "The investment was fast and simple. I handled everything digitally and completed the transaction within minutes. I recommend it to every investor in my network."

Where This Is Going

We are live in Germany and Austria, with European expansion planned from 2027. The long-term picture is straightforward: everything you can do with a cap table — private through to public fundraising, employee participation, paying a freelancer in shares, syndicates, one day even running your own fund — should happen in one place. Every deal happens on beel. Every change to a cap table becomes real on beel.

What Changes for Customers

Nothing but the name and the domain. Logins keep working, existing contracts remain unchanged, and the platform is the same one you used last week. Over the coming weeks we are moving the website, app and documents over to beel, and tokenize.it will redirect permanently to beel.com — old links will keep working.

Thank You! To the founders who have raised on the platform and the investors who backed them: thank you for trusting us with your rounds. You are the reason a niche product became infrastructure. The name is new. What we are building was the plan from day one.