33needs allows you to become a startup investor

The craze for so-called “crowdsourcing financing” has been gaining momentum lately. Most recently opened a startup 33needs . This is a place where socially-oriented startups can get initial funding from ordinary people from the Network who want to become sponsors of a project. Such a mix of Kickstarter projects that offer ordinary people to help finance creative projects, and Kiva , where some people lend to others, acting as partners.

Social startups publish their “needs”: how much money they plan to receive, what problems or tasks they are going to solve and how they are going to carry out their plans. And supporting their arguments with videos to help spread their words virally. People can invest $ 10, $ 100, $ 1000 or more in exchange for receiving a share in the funded company in the future and the promised return on their investment for a specified period of time, if the startup goals are achieved.

All startups involved in the search for funding, are commercial enterprises, such as 33needs. But some of them are willing to share income with the needy, such as HalfUnited, a clothing company that spends part of its profits on food for starving children.

As a mediator, 33needs directly takes 5% commission from all investments in startups, but does not take anything if the set goals have not been achieved. In most cases, start-ups are trying to raise investment of $ 50,000, which allows them to successfully launch their own company. Most try to combine profit-making with the implementation of socially-useful actions, which are increasingly becoming the marketing strategy of many enterprises, focused on people who want to feel their value in the world and can contribute to the common cause. Not everyone succeeds in this, but the most “hardy” projects succeed.
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33needs was founded by entrepreneur Josh Tetrik. He does not see 33needs as a substitute for business angels and investment capitalists, but rather as a launching pad for ideas that perhaps would never have gone beyond the framework of discussion at dinner with friends. This is the starting point for finding fans of your idea, generating a base of people who are loyal to your product who will acquire what you are doing or use your product, says Josh. And the main difference here is that you can not just help the project with money, as in traditional schemes, namely to invest your money.

The use of “crowdfunding”, or investments from a large number of people, helps to set a higher framework than in cases of microloans to projects or specific people. This scheme is suitable for complex projects that require sufficient investment to implement. But this scheme will work in practice or not - time will tell. And not all small projects will grow into big startups. But now everyone has an incentive to be really good to please the maximum number of people.

via TechCrunch