Equity crowdfunding is an innovative way to raise capital or invest in young companies, often along with experienced angel investors. This alternative funding opportunity is increasingly becoming sexy also in Europe. Below I feature some campaigns that I liked in June. (Note: This is no investment recommendation, make your own judgement before/if you invest).
Berlin-based Returbo is the market leader within the secondary market for e-commerce products, is a profitable business, with expected revenues of €6m in 2015. The platform is profitably selling customer returns and other secondary market products through more than 30 online sales channels and are offering consumers brand products at unbeatable prices. …541 investors, €462,460 invested on German platform COMPANISTO.
Innovify (on Seedrs) is a product incubation partner for startups and SMEs, accelerating them to success. Innovify is a venture partner working with start-ups and SMEs to develop innovative products. Startups and SMEs often have innovative ideas, but struggle to acquire the skills and talent needed to bring their ideas to market.
Caja is an innovative Robotic Fulfillment Solution for e-commerce storage facilities. As e-commerce continues to grow exponentially, and same day or one hour competitive fulfillment has become the mainstream expectation of customers,more and more businesses are in need of a more efficient way to locate, transfer, and package their products. Caja has an innovative solution which allows storage facilities to create space efficient warehouse management solution with no infrastructure requirements, powered by big data analytics and optimization, for a fully automated warehouse. …Investing with Gigi Levy Weiss. He says: “I am lucky. I took one of my favorite hobbies – investing in smart, talented, motivated and passionate entrepeneurs – and turned it into a job I love. Finding great teams who set out to innovate in domains I feel are ripe for innovation. The idea itself may not be perfect at the time of the investment as long as I think the team is right and the domain is interesting.”
My friend Michael Gebert is organizing a good event CrowdDialog in Helsinki (August 27). CrowdSourcing – CrowdFunding and CrowdInnovation is a very integral part of the digital transformation for companies, cities and countries. CrowdDialog invited the leading experts to Helsinki to unite knowledge and discuss effects of disruption through crowd-based processes, including equity crowdfunding.
