The European crowdfunding market is an exciting place to be in. Crowdfunding as a new way to finance business, creative or social goals is revolutionizing the way businesses, artists or even the government thinks about financing. With this new opportunity, comes a...
Crowdfunding
An alternative finance method of raising money from large groups of people, as donations, as a loan, or in exchange for company equity
Top 10 Crowdfunders for Equity USA
Here are our 2013 preliminary top US crowd funders contestants pending the legalization of Crowd Funding for Equity under the JOBS Act. We will do a follow up article in a months time to show additional names and order of strength between the leading brands in North...
Kickstarter Project of the Month: Badass Socks
Crowdfunding has the potential to change the way we look at careers. Today you can quit your job. birth an idea and actually build it. The story of badass socks starts with two friends who quit their jobs at LivingSocial, spent 12 weeks learning web development at dev...
Future of Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding has been an increasingly talked about topic for several years in various contexts, even though the biggest applications and value are just being created. Since HR 3606, commonly known as the JOBS Act, was written into law in April 2012 in the US, many...
Biased Crowd Funding: “Invest in a Younger You”
AlumniFunder is a new crowd funding startup based out of Los Angeles. They connect alumni at top universities like Harvard, Princeton, Georgetown, MIT with entrepreneurs and innovators who are still in school. They are building a marketplace for disruptive...
Y-Combinator Funds First Non-Profit Startup: A Crowdfunding Platform for Medical Aid
Watsi is a crowdfunding platform that connects you with patients in serious need of low-cost medical care and enables you to fund high-impact treatments. The dynamic team from Watsi has a simple enough goal: to help people dying of treatable illnesses because they...
The Rise of Disintermediated Crowdfunding
One Friday morning a few months back, the creators of Lockitron, an innovative deadbolt system controlled by your smartphone, were rejected by the folks over at Kickstarter. The following week, the Lockitron team formed a plan: they would launch Lockitron on their own...
Crowd Empowered Microfinance
Below is a preview of a chapter I wrote on Crowd Empowered Microfinance in the forthcoming book Microfinance in Developing Countries, edited by Jean-Paul Gueyie, Ronny Manos, and Jacob Yaron. Microfinance is a multi-billion dollar industry with a rich history...
Crowdfunding is Propelling Social Innovation
Social innovation refers to new strategies, concepts, ideas and organizations that meet social needs of all kinds — from working conditions and education to community development and health — and that extend and strengthen civil society. Social media and the internet...
Mosaic: Cleantech Crowdfunding Finances Solar Projects in Record Time
Do you know what the return is on your saving account? Close to nothing. The sharing and crowdsourcing economy is paving the way for more robust methods of investments with real return on many fronts. Mosaic just launched the first online clean energy investment...
Razoo Helps Charities Fundraise & Engage Effectively: Q&A with Lesley Mansford
Lesley Mansford, CEO of Razoo answered a few questions for us on Razoo, a social fundraising platform that is changing the dynamics of corporate and personal charity. Razoo endeavors to make it easy to not only support your favorite cause, but is also proving to be a...
Self-Proclaimed Kickstarter Reject Creates Open Source Crowdfunding Website
After Kickstarter released stringent rules governing hardware projects, startup company Lockitron decided it was time to take action. To fund their hardware project, the founders wrote their source crowdfunding platform, which is now open sourced. According to their...
Crowdfunding Infographic – The US JOBS Act Explained
Crowdfunding is a way that businesses can seek money from a "crowd" to start-up, finance a new product, or expand their operations. Instead of pursuing big VC's and investors, businesses pursue the crowd. The "crowd" pledges money to the effort - could be a start-up,...
A Framework for Political Crowdfunding
The recent presidential election in the United States was the most expensive race in history, with Mitt Romney and Barack Obama spending about $1 billion respectively on their efforts to win the White House. While both candidates raised hundreds of millions of...
Razoo Kicks Off Five “Giving Days” Across the U.S. to Raise $15 million for Local Charities
Razoo, the fastest growing crowdfunding platform for causes, announces its first-ever week of giving – a week of five of Razoo’s “Giving Days”. Giving Days are powerful 24-hour online fundraising competitions that unite communities around causes. “Apart from being a...
Will Crowdfunding Platforms Help Fund Civic Projects
Thinking Kickstarter When we hear crowdfunding many of us -- including me -- think Kickstarter. Which is understandable since the crowdfunding company has successfully launched over 65 thousand projects. And has over $305 million in total dollars pledged to all...
Video: Crowdsourcing Week Speaks with Max Sidorov on Google Hangout
Yesterday I published an article where I discussed some of my personal feelings about Max Sidorov. And last night Epi Ludvik and I where able to speak with Max. We used Google+ Hangouts on Air -- it was fun and Epi was feeling rather comical last night. Obviously, I...
The Crowdfunding Bill Will Help Startups
Today is the day that the crowdfunding ecosystem in the US rejoices -- more specifically startups and small businesses. President Obama will sign the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act into law. The law allows non-accredited investors to invest in startups --...
Patrick McHenry Speaking in Support of the Crowdfunding — JOBS Act
Yesterday was a big day for crowdfunding. While it is supported by the Senate, House and President; there are many within the government and private sector that see crowdfunding as problematic. One of the main supporters of crowdfunding is Congressman Patrick McHenry...
President Obama to Sign the Crowdfunding Bill into Law
So what crowdfunding? According to Wikipedia -- the crowd-powered reference site: “...the collective cooperation, attention and trust by people who network and pool their money and other resources together, usually via the Internet, to support efforts initiated by...