Crowdfunding

Discover And Invest In Great Startups. Crowdfunding Platform Seedrs Begins Offering ‘Convertible’ Equity Option. Proof there’s still room for innovation in the equity crowdfunding space yet, if Seedrs‘ claims of a first hold true.

The “pan-European” equity crowdfunding platform is adding ‘convertible’ equity as an option for startups wanting to raise funding via the site, with the UK’s Future Ad Labs being the first to use the new investment mechanism. Convertibles, commonly used in Silicon Valley and increasingly in Europe, offer the advantage of simplicity and speed, since the company’s valuation is deferred to a future date, typically when a larger VC round takes place and determined by the VCs leading the subsequent round. Meanwhile, investors in a convertible are offered a discount in relation to that future valuation.

In the case of Future Ad Labs, it’s offering a 15 per cent discount to ‘armchair’ investors via Seedrs. Part of that previous round also included £60,000 from 70 investors via Seedrs. [SWARM] Welcome to the SWARM economy. [SWARM] Welcome to the SWARM Economy The internet is a massive network of individuals freely sharing information.

It has transformed and flattened traditional power structures and governments that attempted to shackle it. It has produced incredible innovations in technology and greater human freedom. At the same time, the financial elite has erected massive walls that have protected it against these changes. Big banks have lobbied governments for regulatory walls with money stolen from these very same governments, even while they themselves have been systematically defrauding the public. While millions are unemployed, the new kings of finance continue to advocate violence aimed to destroy everyone that would threaten their stranglehold on power.

We are in the early stages of a revolution. Innovations in many sectors, from internet startups to warfare, have shown that flat organizational structures with streamlined individual autonomy can outcompete slower behemoths. Swarm Redefines Crowdfunding Bitcoin Magazine. There has been a lot of talk in recent months regarding the role of cryptocurrency for the future of crowdfunding and equity creation.

A new company is taking a different, and seemingly more widespread approach to cryptoequity and community funding of early stage projects and business ventures. This new platform, called Swarm, is co-founded by Joel Dietz, a former California native who now resides in Berlin. Swarm is the world’s first distributed incubator, and uses technology built on Bitcoin to allow startups to raise money through launching their own coin. This platform is providing a novel way to invest in innovation without the large barrier to entry of conventional funding methods.

Swarm. Lighthouse Is A Crowdfunding Platform Built On Top Of Bitcoin. Meet Lighthouse, a bitcoin-powered app to create and manage your own crowdfunding campaign on your computer.

Bitcoin core developer Mike Hearn showcased the app at the Bitcoin 2014 conference in Amsterdam. And Lighthouse is a great example of how you can develop a complicated transaction framework on top of the bitcoin protocol. Hearn’s tagline about his own app speaks for itself: “[it] provides you with your own Kickstarter, on your own desktop. It explores one possible vision of how we can build decentralized applications.” If you are skeptical about bitcoin as a currency, there is a whole different aspect that makes it interesting as well — bitcoin is also an application platform.

I was particularly eager to discover new startups building apps and services on top of the bitcoin protocol at the conference. Lighthouse provides a wallet and a way to build crowdfunding campaigns without relying on a trusted third party. Alternative Investing Startup Wikifolio Raises €6M For International Expansion. Alternative investing startup Wikifolio has closed a €6 million funding round led by European early stage venture fund Speedinvest.

The fresh capital will be used by the Austrian company, which I’m told broke-even in the first quarter of 2014, to expand beyond its home country and Germany. Existing shareholders VHB Ventures (Verlagsgruppe Handelsblatt), Lang & Schwarz, Michael Grabner Media, and Michael Altrichter also participated in the round, along with a number of private investors associated with Speedinvest, among them Jörg Flöck, a former Thomson Reuters executive. Offering a platform for alternative investing, Wikifolio enables traders to turn their portfolios into fully-fledged financial products, called “wikifolios”, which are then listed on the stock exchange Börse Stuttgart.

Each trade, including execution price and fees, can then be tracked in real-time on Wikifolio and partner sites. The site went live in Germany in 2012. Crowdfunding-Rekord: Protonet erzielt mehr als eine Million Euro. Innerhalb von 90 Minuten hat das Hamburger Start-up Protonet auf der Crowdfunding-Plattform Seedmatch rund 750.000 Euro eingesammelt.

Damit hat es viel beachtete Kickstarter-Projekte wie Pebble und Oculus VR in den Schatten gestellt. Inzwischen liegt die Investitionssumme bei fast 1,2 Millionen Euro. Damit fehlen zum Erreichen zum Funding-Ziel, das die Firma von ursprünglich 500.000 auf 1,5 Millionen erhöht hat, gut 300.000 Euro. Die Crowdfunding-Kampagne läuft allerdings auch noch 60 Tage. Protonet hat eine als Personal Cloud Server bezeichnete Box entwickelt und bereits produziert. Mit den Protonet-Servern lässt sich wie mit Cloud-Angeboten arbeiten, die Daten liegen aber im eigenen Büro. Außerdem hat Protonet auf die Box eine Vielzahl von selbstentwickelten Anwendungen draufgepackt.