What are the common challenges startups face in equity tokenisation?

The most common challenges include navigating FCA regulatory requirements, selecting the right tokenisation platform, structuring the legal framework for tokenised equity, educating investors unfamiliar with digital securities, and ensuring compliance with the UK Digital Securities Sandbox rules.

What are tokenisation platforms and how do they work?

Tokenisation platforms are regulated technology providers that convert equity or other assets into digital tokens on a blockchain or distributed ledger. In the UK, platforms operating under FCA oversight include those participating in the Digital Securities Sandbox. They handle the technical issuance, custody, and transfer of tokenised securities.

What financial insights should founders know before tokenising equity?

Founders should understand the cost structure of tokenisation (legal, platform, and compliance fees), the valuation implications of fractional ownership, how tokenised equity differs from traditional equity crowdfunding, and the tax treatment of digital securities under UK law.

What investor strategies apply to tokenised equity?

Investors in tokenised equity can benefit from fractional ownership of high-value assets, improved liquidity through secondary market trading on regulated platforms, portfolio diversification across early-stage UK startups, and participation in deals previously accessible only to institutional investors.

What is the UK regulatory landscape for equity tokenisation?

The UK regulatory landscape is governed primarily by the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) and HM Treasury. Key frameworks include the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023, the Digital Securities Sandbox (DSS), and ongoing FCA consultations on the treatment of tokenised securities. The UK is positioning itself as a global leader in regulated digital securities.

What is equity tokenisation?

Equity tokenisation is the process of converting ownership rights in a company into digital tokens recorded on a blockchain or distributed ledger. These tokens represent shares or equity stakes and can be transferred, traded, or held digitally, subject to regulatory compliance. In the UK, tokenised equity is treated as a regulated financial instrument under FCA oversight.

Founders Are Reaching for Tokenisation to Raise, Not to Trade. The Data Already Says So.

Shawn Jhanji
Jun 11
5 min read

Picture a founder building a credible, growing company somewhere outside the M25, with real revenue and no warm introduction to a single London fund. The product works. The numbers stand up. What is missing is not ambition or quality. It is access: to the right investors, on reasonable terms, without spending a year of runway learning to pitch a system that was never designed with her in mind.

That founder is the reason this publication keeps returning to a single, stubborn set of numbers. Just 2p of every 1 pound of UK venture capital reaches female founded businesses, according to British Business Bank data, and the picture is worse still once geography, age, background and network are added to the gender lens. The structural problem is well documented and, frankly, well worn. The more useful question in 2026 is not whether the old model is biased. It is what is actually changing, and whether any of it reaches the founder above.

This week offered a revealing contrast. The headlines in tokenised finance were dominated by Ondo Finance launching a venue for leveraged trading of tokenised US mega cap stocks. Speculation, in other words. Yet when you look past the noise at what companies issuing tokenised assets actually say they are doing with the technology, a very different and far more founder relevant picture emerges.

What the issuers themselves say

Brickken's State of RWA Issuers research, drawn from organisations actively building tokenised assets, found that 53.8 per cent of issuers use tokenisation chiefly to raise capital, while only 15.4 per cent cite liquidity as the core driver. Nearly half expect secondary market access within six to twelve months, but it is plainly a second order benefit. The primary use case, in the words of the people doing it, is capital formation. Roughly seven in ten projects are already live, and the single largest obstacle they report is not technology or demand but regulatory friction, cited by 84.6 per cent.

Read that back slowly, because it inverts the popular story. Tokenisation is widely discussed as a way to make assets tradable. The firms actually using it say they reach for it first as a way to raise. That distinction is everything for the founder access debate, because raising capital, not trading it, is the problem that keeps good companies small.

Why this matters for the founder who is overlooked

If tokenisation is, in practice, an issuance and fundraising technology, then its relevance to underrepresented and under networked founders is direct rather than theoretical. Three mechanics do the work.

First, cost and time. Running a round is expensive and slow, and that friction falls hardest on founders without the networks that make warm capital cheap. Tokenised issuance can compress the operational drag of a raise, from cap table administration to investor onboarding, into something closer to software. The friction tax that we've written about before is, at root, an efficiency problem, and efficiency is exactly what better issuance infrastructure attacks.

Second, reach. Within whatever regulatory perimeter applies, tokenised issuance can widen the pool of qualifying investors a founder can credibly reach. This is not an argument for opening private markets to retail, a different and more fraught debate that we deliberately leave to one side. It is an argument that a founder with a thin network should be able to reach the qualified investors who would back her if only they could find her, and that the current mechanics make that introduction far harder than it needs to be. VaaS. Visibility as a service?

Third, and least appreciated, scaling without surrender. The founder who does not need initial external capital still stands to gain. Tokenised equity combined with PISCES enabled secondary trading points toward a model of organic, incremental capital raising that does not require a traditional Series A, B or C. Traditional rounds hand power to institutional investors through board seats, preferred terms and liquidation preferences. A tokenised, secondary enabled structure lets a founder raise at scale while keeping control, and lets early backers find liquidity without forcing a full exit. That changes who holds power in a capitalised company, which is a structural argument, not a feature update.

Holding the two pictures together

None of this is a finished story, and it would be dishonest to present it as one. The benefits are emerging, the regulation is incomplete, and the same week that issuers tell us they use tokenisation to raise, the loudest product in the market is a leverage venue for US stocks. Both pictures are true at once. The technology is being proven first where the money is easiest and the use most speculative, and it will matter most where the money is hardest and the founders least served.

The earlier experiments in this space, the DAOs and evergreen funds that flickered and mostly faded, were asking a genuine question: can capital formation be structured in ways that are fairer, more transparent and flexible and less hostile to the people building the companies? Many of those vehicles have not survived contact with reality. . . . . yet. But the question did, and tokenisation paired with regulated secondary venues is now advancing it in a more durable form.

If the developments and direction of travel with the regulatory and market infrastructure continues, the prize will not just be cheaper and more efficient rounds, but a capital system that reaches further down the network and further out from London, that lets credible founders raise on their merits rather than their contacts, and that keeps more of the upside and the decisions with the people doing the building. That is worth being clear eyed and hopeful about in equal measure. The data already shows where founders are pointing this technology. The job now is to continue to innovate and build the rails that let them.

Key Takeaways

British Business Bank data still shows just 2p of every 1 pound of UK venture capital reaching female founded businesses, and the gap widens once geography, age and network are counted.
Brickken's research finds 53.8 per cent of tokenised asset issuers use the technology chiefly to raise capital, against only 15.4 per cent for liquidity.
That inverts the popular framing: in practice, tokenisation is an issuance and fundraising technology first, a trading one second.
For overlooked founders, the relevant mechanics are lower cost issuance, wider reach to qualified investors, and PISCES enabled scaling without surrendering control.
The benefits are still emerging and regulation is the main brake, but the direction is founder facing and worth building toward.