Nordics Embrace Crowdfunding
With project after project hitting higher and higher goals on Kickstarter (a watch just hit $7 million of its $100,000 goal) one can say the crowdfunding industry is hot. The U.S. is also opening up equity crowdfunding for startups, which could usher in a new era of startup investing. Perhaps it's just hard to compete against the noise and hype of the U.S., but the Nordic region also has a couple platforms that can get your startup funded though both Kickstarter-like gifting and equity crowdfunding.
Grow VC Turns Free
Grow VC (or Grow Venture Community) is a community-based platform that helps start-ups acquire the initial funding either through crowd-sourcing or through direct investments from venture capitalists or business angels. As of today, Grow VC scrapped their membership fee and opened their network for free for anyone. Members of the community that would like to invest into listed start-ups can purchase a micro investment membership and invest all the credits they bought. The monthly plans are $20, $50 and $150. No commission is charged from direct investments by professional investors either. Grow VC also recently released an iPhone app to help their members keep updated on the go.
Venture Bonsai Takes Crowdfunding To A New Level
Venture Bonsai is a new crowdfunding platform that is in private "invitation stage" as the co-founder of the company, Antti Hannula, states. Venture Bonsai enters the increasingly active market of enabling new methods to fund startups. The company is a little over six months old, but the idea originates back to Summer 2009 when Antti Hannula and Marko Lehtimäki talked about the difficulties startups face in getting funded.
Tom Keller of TechStars Encourages Helsinki To Try Their Model (Video)
A while back EnterpriseHelsinki invited Tom Keller of TechStars to come and speak at their event in Helsinki on their incubation model, how they get high quality startups emerge from TechStars' program and whether this could be possible in Helsinki, Finland since it's possible in Boulder, Colorado, which is mere 100,000 strong town in the Rockies. Boulder, much like Helsinki now, has not always been famous as a hot bed for startups, but has lately become as one.
GrowVC Looking To Disrupt Global VC Business
GrowVC has slowly been marketing their concept in various social media networks and today is the date they're finally coming out with the concept and explaining it to the public. Back in December I had a chat with Valto Loikkanen, one of the co-founders of the company, and he told me the concept has been in finetuning for the last two years or so. They've put in a lot of effort to make sure their companies are registered and managed in the right way so that they are ready to scale once things start taking off.
The concept GrowVC is looking to disrupt is the age old venture capital business model. Many have complained that while business models in the online and mobile world have been turned upside down, one model remains loyal to the way business is done and that's the model of investing money into startups. Furthermore, the need for capital has gone down dramatically making smaller private investors more potential investors in startups than larger venture capitalists.
