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Next Generation Innovations

SocialProject.Ph

Social Project about:

SocialProject.PH is a crowdfunding platform that connects inspiring initiatives for communities in the Philippines to supporters around the world who want to increase the impact of social good projects. Created in 2012, it advocates responsible giving that promotes sustainability, empowerment and creativity for a better future.

To ensure security, SocialProject.PH is SSL-certified to safeguard donor information. The platform processes payments securely via PayPal Adaptive payments, which only charges a donor if a project is successfully funded and only after the 30 to 60-day fundraising timeline. The milestones offer an encouraging push towards a project’s completion. Donors can be confident that project partners have sufficient funding to complete a milestone or project. For project partners, it allows flexible funding, with the option to receive funds when a milestone is achieved. The platform only receives a 5% commission after PayPal fees if a milestone is reached or if a project is successfully funded for the full amount.

Social Project.PH is a registered US LLC company, operating primarily in the Philippines by screening and vetting project partners.

SocialProject.PH

Cyber Agent In Japanese Crowdfunding

Japan’s CyberAgent (TYO:4751) has burst onto Japan’s crowdfunding scene with the launch of its new CyberAgent Crowd Funding platform. Actually, it will launch fully this summer, by which time it’ll be ready to match startup companies and neat ideas with people who want to fund them. The new site aims to be raising $1 million per month for its listed projects.

The new service will be a spin-off from the CyberAgent parent company, who’s investing 40 million yen (US$400,000) to kickstart it. Ryotaro Nakayama will be the new CEO. It’s also separate from CyberAgent Ventures, the company’s investment arm.

CyberAgent Crowd Funding promises to fully investigate all projects before adding them to the site, and will also back them up with media and promotional support. Read more

CyberAgent Crowd Funding

Crowdfunding Across Asia

SeedAsia is the first equity crowdfunding site to launch in the region, although the equity funding trend has been taking off in the US, where there are apparently over 200 such sites. One of them, FundersClub, recently cleared US regulators, paving the way for more such sites to flourish.

It’s kind of a hybrid between Kickstarter and private investment,

said co-founder Tom Russell. The startups to be listed would have ideally gone through some some sort of incubation program and would have shown promise. They can apply offer between $50,000 and $1.5 million in equity through SeedAsia’s platform."

SeedAsia Blog

Equity Crowdfunding is the 21st Century Investment Banker

Considered one of the greatest investors of all time, Peter Lynch had a simple investment principle - “invest in what you know.” This straightforward investment philosophy helped him find good undervalued consumer-oriented stocks and achieve an annual average return of 29 percent while managing the Fidelity Magellan Fund from 1977 to 1990, which grew from $20 million to $14 billion during that time.

We appreciate Lynch’s simple, yet adaptive, investment style, which focused on the basics of good management, exceptional businesses, and quality consumer products. However, in today’s Sarbanes-Oxley world, for lots of logical reasons, investors are increasingly unable to realize this type of return or get in early enough to see that magnitude of returns. For example, a single share of Starbucks bought at the 1992 IPO is now worth almost 100x its original price. Even if one invested at Facebook’s public nadir of $50 billion in value, and it reaches $350 billion market capitalization, it would only be a 7x return.

The JOBS Act has relieved some of the restrictions that were put into place by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, with the most notable innovation being crowdfunding. As the investment banker who had the privilege to take storied retail brands like Starbucks public, I see the crowdfunding marketplace improving upon the investment banking franchises of yesteryear by allowing retail investors to once again gain early access to high-risk growth investment opportunities.

Providing that opportunity early to investors inspired us to invest in CircleUp, a great equity-based crowdfunding site focused on consumer and retail.  In our minds,  CircleUp’s equity-based crowdfunding approach will become the 21st century investment banker.

Rather than shying away from what some consider to be competition, we were the first institutional investors to back Ryan Caldbeck and Rory Eakin, the co-founders of CircleUp, and embrace the value that crowdfunding can bring to early-stage startups. Two years later, CircleUp is on its way to making their vision a reality with a game-changing approach and marketplace that matches promising consumer companies with the right investors. This week, the company successfully closed new funding of $7.5 million led by Union Square Ventures and Google Ventures, with participation from my firm, Maveron. The financing marks the next step for Caldbeck and Eakin in making CircleUp the investment platform for the next generation of consumer brands. Early evidence shows that there is a good chance the next Chobani, Vitamin Water, or Under Armor will start by raising capital on CircleUp.

In his Forbes article on the one-year old “Jumpstart Our Business Startups” (JOBS) Act, Caldeck says “Equity crowd funding is the most disruptive thing to happen to the financial services industry in a very long time.” As a former investor at consumer private equity funds, Ryan saw a hole in the market – early stage consumer businesses with great potential struggling to find capital and not a head on fit with normalized fundraising models paired with investors who couldn’t gain early access to these high quality businesses.

I couldn’t agree more. Not only is crowdfunding great for investors, but it’s even better for entrepreneurs, opening up untraditional sources of capital and creating a network previously unavailable to early stage companies. While we know as well as any the value great institutional investors can bring to the table, we also know that institutional capital is not right for every type or stage of promising business. Raising capital from individuals rather than institutions, can provide entrepreneurs with benefits such as more internal control, or more flexible liquidity timelines. Unlike investment banking, crowdfunding gives independent investors complete transparency and visibility into where other smart investors, frequently their peers, are investing. Rather than a junior banker calling dozens of institutional clients and retail investors with research and analysis on potential investment opportunities, CircleUp offers individual investors direct access to opportunities. It provides a format where they can find the relevant information, receive sample products, and connect directly with the company and management team. This new approach allows influential private investors to speak with their pocketbooks, a signal that is vastly superior to the investment banking research analyst reports in today’s hyper connected world.

Lets face it, crowdfunding is the new investment banker and, in many ways, a new important player in the venture capital ecosystem. Maveron has been one of the few VC firms that have made bets on equity crowdfunding.  Just like all our investments, we’re looking for incredible entrepreneurs like Ryan and Rory and for businesses that are ready to disrupt industries, displace incumbents, and establish market leadership. We love the idea of investing behind disruptive companies like CircleUp, and relish in the fact they might end up being our competition for certain investments. With crowdfunding, more entrepreneurs with the next big idea will access capital and that’s a good thing for the entire entrepreneurial ecosystem.

(Source: maveron.com)

Crowdfunding

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Crowdfunding in China

Guest post from China Radio International

Eine gute Idee allein garantiert auch in China noch nicht automatisch geschäftlichen Erfolg. Besonders dann nicht, wenn das Startkapital fehlt.

Das wusste auch Jia Yuhao, der Besitzer eines kleinen Gästehauses in Lhasa, der Hauptstadt des Autonomen Gebietes Tibet. Er brauchte dringend neues Mobiliar, zur Finanzierung wandte er sich im vergangenen Jahr an das in China populäre Portal demohour.com.

Zwei Monate später hatte er 146.000 Yuan zusammen, gespendet von 3.000 Internetnutzern. Sie alle erhielten eine Mitgliedskarte für Jias kleines Hotel in Lhasa.

So wie Jia setzen immer mehr chinesische Jungunternehmer und Start-Ups auf das so genannte Crowdfunding, darauf also, im Internet finanzielle Unterstützung für ihr Geschäftsprojekt zu finden.

Sie stellen ihr Vorhaben auf einem entsprechenden Portal vor und geben dabei die angepeilte Investitionssumme und den Ausschreibungszeitraum an, das Portal kassiert bis zu zehn Prozent für seine Dienstleistung.

Das ursprünglich aus den USA stammende Crowdfunding erfreut sich mittlerweile in vielen Teilen der Welt wachsender Beliebtheit. Für Zhang You, den Mitbegründer des chinesischen Portals demohour.com, liegen die Gründe auf der Hand:

Crowdfunding macht es für normale Leute ohne große Reichtümer viel leichter, ein eigenes Geschäft oder Unternehmen zu gründen

Demohour startete im Juli 2011 als erstes chinesisches Crowdfunding-Portal, zahlreiche weitere folgten – etwa Musikid.com für Musiker und Bands oder Tmeng.cn für Filmprojekte oder auch Emielife.com für Designer.

Mich hat der Riesenerfolg von Kickstarter.com in den USA inspiriert und ich dachte mir, dass die Leute hier in China auch so eine Möglichkeit brauchen, ihre Ideen umzusetzen, 

so Zhang. Zwar sei man noch weit entfernt von Dimensionen wie bei Kickstart, wo für ein einzelnes Projekt Millionen Dollar zusammenkommen können, aber der Anfang sei gemacht. Und er glaube einfach an die Zukunft des Konzepts in China. Dazu trägt auch bei, dass sich Zhang der Gefahr bewusst ist, die von Online-Kriminellen ausgeht:

Unser Team prüft die eingereichten Projekte auf Herz und Nieren und nur zehn Prozent der eingereichten Konzepte erscheinen tatsächlich auf unserer Webseite. 

So haben etwa Projekte rund um Alkohol, Drogen oder Kosmetik sowie Immobilien keine Chance bei demohour.com.

Aber auch gelistete Projekte finden nicht in jedem Fall Sponsoren: Von den etwa 700 bei demohour.com ausgeschriebenen Vorhaben erhielt nur die Hälfte wirklich die erhoffte finanzielle Unterstützung.

Dass selbst das nur ein Anfang sein kann, schreibt der Politikwissenschaftler Liu Weibing ambitionierten Jungunternehmern ins Pflichtenheft:

Das erforderliche Geld einzusammeln ist wirklich nur der allererste Schritt. Die Leute erwarten gute Produkte und guten Service. Es gibt also sehr viel zu tun, als nur eine erfolgreiche Online-Finanzierung zu feiern.

Chinese Crowdfunding

Chinese Crowdfunding

Demohour.com

Crowd funding has made it easier for ordinary people without much money to start their own companies,

said Zhang You, co-founder of Demohour. Launched in July 2011, Demohour is China's first crowd funding website. It has been followed by dozens of others, including Musikid.com for music projects, Tmeng.cn for movie producers and Emielife.com for designers.

I was inspired by the huge success of Kickstarter.com, the most influential crowd funding platform in the US I think Chinese people also need such an opportunity to realize their dreams,

said Zhang. For project initiators, crowd funding websites not only provide an alternative to gather money, but also allow business people to promote their products and gauge market interest.

Supporters gave us so many wonderful suggestions. One of the ideas we adopted was selling lampshades with bulbs included,

said Jiang Zhaoning, a developer of intelligent light bulbs who received crowd funding to the tune of 40,000 yuan. To Jiang's surprise, several venture capital groups contacted him after Demohour displayed his project.

Crowd funding websites are effective in promoting products. And they're really cheap! 

said Jiang. Zha Li, founding partner of venture capital (VC) funds "Istartvc" and "Dragonvest Partners" inShanghai, regards crowd funding as a necessary alternative to existing forms of investing, such as private capital (PE) and VC. View Full Story

Singapore Slings Into Crowdfunding

Singapore's population is nearly half the size of NYC! In the last six months they have raised $134.000, it's a milestone!

Japanese Crowdfunding

In Japan fundraising has become one of the highest hurdles a startup can overcome. Young Japanese entrepreneurs in dire need of cash, however, are now resorting to “crowd funding” to take care of their financing needs.

How did crowd funding grow in Japan?

In recent months, young people interested in setting up startups have turned their eyes to crowd funding because it is hard for nascent companies to raise funds.

Inspired by IT trendsetter Chris Anderson’s latest book “Makers” and the U.S. “maker movement,” an increasing number of Japanese are looking for ways to produce something outside a factory setting, boosting potential demand for seed funds.

“In the second half of 2012, Chris Anderson’s ‘Makers’ was published and it started to prove the superiority of crowd funding as a way of promoting the Japanese manufacturing industry,” Campfire said in a press release in January.

This method attracts not only entrepreneurs and creators, but also investors.

It is a very useful way of raising funds

said Hiroyuki Kuroda, secretary general for Venture Enterprise Center. 

A lot of people can easily join the projects (as financial supporters) with low risks, if they agree with the purpose.

View Full Story At The Japan Times

Candy Crush

The new Hongkong flu

Candy Crush is played by around 1.3 million people a day in Hong Kong, which is almost 20 percent of the city’s population. Candy Crush is a puzzle game where players earn points by matching candies — sort of like Bejeweled. It’s optimized for iPhone 5.

Download iTunes

Learn From The Chinese

For American startups, monetization is often synonymous with procrastination, and too many products die in the valley between traction and true business. From launch, Pheed anticipated this problem by allowing anyone on the platform to charge their followers money for the privilege of reading. The scheme doesn't seem to be stalling growth; in fact, Pheed’s metrics show its iOS users spend about 15 times as much time on Pheed as on average iOS apps, according to Flurry.

Companies like eBay and Airbnb quickly balloon in valuation, but still American web startups are loath to fork over money to the people actually creating the content--a model that Kobo says is backwards. “We thought, how do we incentivize people to create better content? Why isn’t anybody doing that?” The idea to make feeds profitable came from Chinese businesses that deliver content over SMS. “You’d have a pop star that put out an SMS blast, and to accept it, the fans would pay $0.25," says Kobo. "It was sleazy way to make money, and the content was cheesy, but the initial birth of the concept was there: The artist who makes the content is actually making money.” Learn more

Joyful Frog

 

JFDI.Asia launches Joyful Frog

an innovative campus to nurture elite entrepreneurs in Asia.

The latest to join this family is an ‘innovation campus’ called Joyful Frog, a new coworking space just launched by startup accelerator JFDI.Asia — which is currently in the midst of its 100-day startup bootcamp.

While JFDI.Asia did not define the venue, which is slightly larger than a tennis court, as a coworking space per se, it does share many characteristics of one, namely, memberships and a limited number of residences, meeting rooms and ‘lily pods’ for discussions plus a cafe for casual interaction, and entrepreneurial-related events on-site.

Altogether, the various components serve to strengthen and build a particular sort of community (in this case related to startups) — a defining trait that separates coworking spaces from shared offices. View full story

IG9 Launched

Today, Vietnam’s finally got a crowdfunding platform. The full-time team of seven come from a motley crew of startups based out of Hanoi including Dynabyte and The Missing Corner. The company is founded by Nam Do, the current CEO of Emotiv, a US company now based in the Silicon Valley, which produces a piece of headgear that allows users to control objects on a screen with their brains. IG9, a cheeky version of the english word “ignite”, will be the first crowdfunding platform of its type in Vietnam – operating in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh city.

Crowdfunding is not a new concept to Asia, there’s at least nine across the region from Japan to Indonesia. The IG9 team hopes to be at the forefront of this in Vietnam, so I talked to Lew Yin How, CEO of the project, to get the lowdown. Read more

Crowdfunding Challenge!

Crowdsourcing Week is organizing a crowdfunding competition. Startups from around the world are invited to submit their ideas. Ten finalists will attempt to raise $30,000 each through a crowdfunding campaign. 

 

The three most succesfull will then win a spot to pitch at the Crowdfunding 

Conference in Singapore to be held from June 3 - 7, 2013

 

The campaigns will be hosted at

 Submit until April 8, 2013. More details can be found on the Crowdsourcing Week website.

 

No take off in Singapore

Despite notable media reports about crowdfunding through The Straits Times, crowdfunding sites like Togather.asia and Crowdonomic has yet to gain critical mass adoption with project creators and backers.

Renyung Ho, co-organiser of CreativeMornings / Singapore and co-founder of Kennel, a co-working space, said, “There’s an increasing interest in the creative scene here seen from the growing number of attendees for our events. We’ve also recently started slotting in one 5 minutes project pitch for each of our CreativeMornings event for project owners who are making an impact in the creative industries but are just starting-up.”

Early movers like Togather.asia and Crowdonomic share the responsibility of educating the general public about the risk and rewards of crowdfunding. Until these companies can build trust and allay fears, there will not be a strong community of core project creators and pledge supporters to grow the crowdfunding scene here.

Ho, who did her undergraduate studies in London, notes that the number of people who start creative projects are still relatively small as compared to design capitals like London or New York City.

Here’s the problem though: project creators who are innovating in hardware and manufactured products have persistently encounter a bottleneck when getting their ideas out in the market since there are limited manufacturing facilities in Singapore willing to deal with orders in small quantities. Full text

Copyright: sge 2013

La La Shou

Crowdfunding with Cinese Characteristics

A new platform launched by internet giant Tencent enables social enterprises in China to diversify their funding streams and reach vast audiences.

When the Chinese social enterprise La La Shou decided to create a club and host an annual conference for its beneficiaries, it turned to a new crowd-funding platform launched by Chinese internet giant Tencent to raise the needed funds.

La La Shou, which provides training, consulting and advocacy for disabled children, their parents and teachers in the city of Xi'an, applied to join the scheme in September. It uploaded its proposal and business plan on Tencent's public welfare page and launched a social media campaign which netted it RMB 50,000 (£5,000) by encouraging 47,000 people to re-tweet its messages in less than two months. theguardian

 

Crowdonomic

To link Asia with the Globe: Crowdonomic on Crodonomic

What is Crowdonomic?

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Our Mission:

Crowdonomic's mission is to empower Entrepreneurs in Asia.

What it is:

Crowdonomic is a platform for Entrepreneurs to gather contributions from Supporters in exchange for products and services ('Rewards') using a 'Pay-as-you-Go' funding system.

How does it work:

Each Campaign has a Description, Target, Deadline and Reward(s). Once a Supporter finds a Campaign they want to support, they can make a financial contribution in exchange for a product or service being offered as a Reward.

crowdonomic