How to Start with Just €100

Ascendit is a content series focused on the intersection of finance and entrepreneurship. Its purpose is to bring financial concepts from the corporate world into clear, actionable insights that help individuals and builders achieve sustainable growth.

📕 Tuesdays deliver the Ascendit Playbook: one big idea, applied to personal finance and entrepreneurship, plus a practical tool to put it into action.

🌍 Thursdays bring Ascendit Radar: a financial update and job opportunities in startups shaping markets, business, and strategy.

💡 The Big Idea

When people think about investing, they often imagine needing thousands of euros before they can even start.

The truth? The hardest euro to invest is your first one. Beginning with just €100 matters far more than waiting to accumulate a big sum.

Why? Because investing is not only about capital, it’s about behavior. Starting small helps you build confidence, learn the tools, and experience the psychology of seeing your money at work. The earlier you begin, the longer compounding has to do its magic.

📊 Financial Growth

So, how can you actually start investing with just €100? Here the answer:

🛠️ Choose the right platform: In Spain, there are several low-barrier options:

Revolut – app based, invest spare change or small amounts in ETFs and stocks (my personal favorite fintech)
Indexa Capital – automated ETF portfolios, “set and forget”
DeGiro – Europe’s cheapest broker, great for ETFs (pretty good, also used it)
Trade Republic – commission-free trades, fractional shares from €1
MyInvestor – index funds and ETFs, recurring contributions, no minimums

🌐 Think diversified, not risky: With €100, avoid chasing single “hot” stocks. Instead, choose a broad ETF (S&P 500, MSCI World) to spread risk across hundreds of companies.

💸 Focus on low costs: Fees are the silent killer of small portfolios. Pick brokers with 0–1€ trades and ETFs with low expense ratios.

🔄 Automate small contributions: Add €20/month and you’ll reach €340 by year’s end. More importantly, you’ll build the habit of consistency.

With €100, you won’t retire tomorrow — but you will begin learning. And those lessons compound just like your money.

🛠️ Builder’s Corner

Entrepreneurs don’t wait until their product is perfect. They launch an MVP, get feedback, and improve.

💡 Founders know their first version is never the final one.

Perfection is a myth. Progress comes from action.

🚀 Airbnb started with air mattresses, Facebook with a Harvard directory, Spotify with a limited library. None of them waited for perfect scale — they tested small, learned fast, and doubled down. Investing €100 works the same way: it’s your prototype, your market test.

By starting lean, you validate your approach and gain insights you could never learn by just reading or waiting. Every iteration sharpens your future “product”: your long-term investing strategy.

🧰 Toolbox

To help you decide where to put your first €100, we’ve built a ETF Comparison Cheat Sheet.

It highlights:

📌 ETF → Full name of the fund
🔤 Ticker → Short trading symbol on the exchange
📊 Index → Benchmark the ETF tracks (e.g., S&P 500, MSCI World)
💰 Fund Size (in €M) → Assets under management; larger funds = more liquidity
💸 TER → Total annual cost; lower = better
💵 Dividend → Accumulating (reinvests) or Distributing (pays out)
📈 1Y in % → Return over the past year (short-term view)
💱 Currency → Trading currency (EUR, USD, GBP)

📈 This is Playbook #2. In the next editions, I’ll dive deeper into finances and the bridge to entrepreneurship. Would you like to follow the series? What’s stopping you from investing your first €100?

Make sure to follow Ascendit on Instagram for a recap 💯