Related Research Articles
Seed money, also known as seed funding or seed capital, is a form of securities offering in which an investor puts capital in a startup company in exchange for an equity stake or convertible note stake in the company. The term seed suggests that this is a very early investment, meant to support the business until it can generate cash of its own, or until it is ready for further investments. Seed money options include friends and family funding, seed venture capital funds, angel funding, and crowdfunding.
An angel investor is an individual who provides capital to a business or businesses, including startups, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. Angel investors often provide support to startups at a very early stage, once or in a consecutive manner, and when most investors are not prepared to back them. In a survey of 150 founders conducted by Wilbur Labs, about 70% of entrepreneurs will face potential business failure, and nearly 66% will face this potential failure within 25 months of launching their company. A small but increasing number of angel investors invest online through equity crowdfunding or organize themselves into angel groups or angel networks to share investment capital and provide advice to their portfolio companies. The number of angel investors has greatly increased since the mid-20th century.
American Homeowner Preservation is an online real estate crowdfunding platform which purchases pools of nonperforming loans from banks and other lenders and then offers borrowers who want to stay in their homes debt restructuring options with reduced payments and discounted principal balances. If homes are vacant or families want to move, AHP offers deficiency waivers and incentive payments to cooperate with short sales in order to put the homes back into service.
EarlyShares is an online platform for real estate fundraising and investing. It was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in Miami, Florida.
CircleUp is a financial technology company based in San Francisco that focuses on consumer goods startups. Since its official launch in April 2012, CircleUp has helped several consumer companies raise equity, including Back to the Roots, Halo Top Creamery, Little Duck Organics, Rhythm Superfoods and others. General Mills has an investment fund that is partnered with CircleUp to invest in companies listed on the platform.
SeedUps is an equity crowdfunding platform for seed investment to launch and focuses on startup companies. It was founded by Michael Faulkner and Gavin Gallagher in 2010 and is aimed at tech startups in the USA, Ireland and the UK. Since launch over 2200 tech businesses have registered. It is only available to accredited or sophisticated investors. The platform is headquartered in Republic of Ireland with offices in the UK, US and Canada. Each funding project on SeedUps lasts for the same duration, namely 180 days.
MicroVentures is an equity crowdfunding website offering investments in early stage companies. MicroVentures connects accredited investors with startups, businesses and services looking to raise funds or participate in select secondary market opportunities. It is the only major equity crowdfunding site that is a broker-dealer registered by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and the first to take a portfolio company to a successful exit. As of October 2013, MicroVentures had raised $20 million, spread among 45 companies including Twitter, Facebook, and Yelp.
Crowdcube is a British investment crowdfunding platform, established by Darren Westlake and Luke Lang in 2011.
AngelList is a U.S. website for fundraising and connecting startups, angel investors, and limited partners. Founded in 2010, it started as an online introduction board for tech startups that needed seed funding. Since 2015, the site allows startups to raise money from angel investors free of charge. Created by serial entrepreneur Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi in 2010, Avlok Kohli has been leading AngelList as its CEO since 2019.
Confidentcrowd was an equity crowdfunding portal based in Phoenix, Arizona. The company was associated with the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012 and was identified as one of the earliest Crowdfunding portals launched in the United States after the JOBS Act made crowdfunding for equity permissible under US law. The company is also noted for its unusual crowdfunding approach which requires investment seekers to undergo screening by FINRA-licensed Broker-Dealers before they can access potential funding.
Companisto is an international equity-based crowdfunding website. It was founded by the lawyers David Rhotert and Tamo Zwinge in June 2012, in Berlin. Companisto allows investors to invest in startups. In return, they become shareholders and are entitled to a share of any profits, as well as potentially benefiting from an exit. Companisto has over 150.000 investors from 92 countries. It is Germany's largest network for investments in start-ups and growth companies.
Invesdor is an international crowdfunding platform operated by several companies which make up the Invesdor Group. With headquarters in Berlin, Germany; Helsinki, Finland; Vienna, Austria and Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Invesdor is one of Europe’s largest crowdfunding platforms and operates as an intermediary between companies seeking investment and investors. Invesdor’s low investment threshold aims to empower small investors to invest via their platform. As of May 2023, Invesdor has been able to connect over 170,000 investors with projects they see the potential in, collecting €438 million in pledges from them. Financed projects include for example restaurants, medtech companies, and sustainable energy projects such as solar and windfarms.
Return on Change (RoC) is an equity crowdfunding platform that connects investors with innovative and socially conscious startups. Return on Change works with startups that operate in five sectors, each of which touches on sustainability in some way: cleantech, edtech, life sciences, social enterprises, and technology. An online equity crowdsourcing platform, RoC helps socially conscious ventures raise capital.
Fundrise is a Washington, D.C.-based financial technology company founded in 2010 that operates an online investment platform. Fundrise has been labeled as the first company to successfully crowdfund investment into the real estate market.
Junction is a San Francisco–based online investment platform that allows accredited investors to purchase limited partnership interests in funds that invest in major motion pictures. It differs from donation-based crowdfunding for film as members of Junction receive investments indirectly in the film projects rather than gifts, and the projects listed on Junction are already fully financed. Investors become limited partners in a fund that has economic exposure to the project through an investment agreement with one of the film's financiers.
Onevest, a New York–based investment crowdfunding site for startups that was acquired by Business Rockstars in April 2018, allowed entrepreneurs to raise capital from accredited investors. In July 2014, startups launching on Onevest had collectively raised over $66 million.
Equity crowdfunding is the online offering of private company securities to a group of people for investment and therefore it is a part of the capital markets. Because equity crowdfunding involves investment into a commercial enterprise, it is often subject to securities and financial regulation. Equity crowdfunding is also referred to as crowdinvesting, investment crowdfunding, or crowd equity.
Alternative finance refers to financial channels, processes, and instruments that have emerged outside of the traditional finance system, such as regulated banks and capital markets. Examples of alternative financing activities through 'online marketplaces' are reward-based crowdfunding, equity crowdfunding, revenue-based financing, online lenders, peer-to-peer consumer and business lending, and invoice trading third party payment platforms.
Groundfloor is an American real estate investing and lending marketplace. It was the first real estate crowdfunding company to achieve SEC qualification utilizing Regulation A+ since the regulation became operable through the JOBS Act.
Securitize, Inc is a financial technology company that provides businesses a platform to raise capital from institutional, accredited or retail investors (crowdfunding) with shares issued in the form of digital tokens recorded on the blockchain, including for Oddity and digital custodian Exodus, which used the Securitize platform to raise $75 million in 2021. Securitize also operates a broker-dealer marketplace on which tokenized shares in private companies are traded. Securitize has approximately 3,000 clients with a combined 1.2 million investors and is regulated by both the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and FINRA. In June 2022, Securitize became authorized by the Spanish government to enter its securities test environment.
References
- 1 2 3 "Houston Startup Energy Funders Aims to Crowdfund the Oil Patch – Xconomy". 3 April 2014.
- ↑ "EnergyFunders COO Casey Minshew Discusses How 2017 is the Year of Oil Investing – Crowdfund Insider". 5 January 2017.
- ↑ "Forget the next movie, now you can crowdfund Texas oil wells". 23 March 2015 – via Reuters.
- ↑ Thorpe, Devin. "Experts Explain New Crowdfunding Rules". Forbes .
- ↑ "Frustration leads to creation of Instagram search app".
- ↑ "Crowdfunding oil and gas".
- ↑ "EnergyFunders Secures More Than $500,000 For Two Texas-Based Projects in Under Two Months – Crowdfund Insider". 25 October 2016.
- ↑ "FINRA Accepts Membership of its First Equity Crowdfunding Portal Exclusively for Investments in the Energy Industry, Opening Oil and Gas Investments and Clean Tech Startups to the Public" . Retrieved 2018-01-24.
- ↑ "Jobs Act Title III Impact – Jobs Act Summary – Crowdfunding News". 14 December 2015.
- ↑ "Wanna cash in on oil? Here's a new way to invest". www.bizjournals.com. Retrieved 2021-03-02.
- ↑ "EnergyFunders Rolls Out One Of The Largest Platforms To Crowdfund US Oil And Gas Projects – Crowdfund Insider". 10 November 2015.
- ↑ "Crowdfunding OIL & GAS – News, Information and References for CrowdfundingCrowdFund Beat". crowdfundbeat.com.