Best-selling author completes first global equity-based Crowdfunding campaign via Symbid

Utrecht, 12/19/2011 – Martijn Arets, author of the book "Brand Expedition, a 5-­‐month journey visiting Europe's most inspiring brands", has collected € 20,000 in investments from the general public, via investment platform Symbid. The investments will be used to translate the successful Dutch version of the book in English and bring it on the international market. Arets used Symbid's investment platform to reach the general public. Special about this transaction is that all investor actually become shareholders in the company of Arets.

Arets needed 2 months to reach his capital goal. In total, 171 investors, domestic and foreign, responded to the call. The English translation of the book is expected in February 2012 and will be available on the website (as EBook or hardcopy) of the author and via regular channels. The translation will gain familiarity with a unique promotional action, in which 1000 fans from 15 countries read a chapter from the book in front of the webcam making it the first read out loud book in the world on YouTube. Arets is very pleased with the result: "The past two months I have not only gained the necessary investment, but also an additional chapter to the story, overwhelming media attention and 171 Brand Expedition ambassadors.“


The investment platform Symbid demonstrates with this transaction that its approach to finance entrepreneurs and businesses works, says CEO, Korstiaan Zandvliet. "With this first successful financing, we proved that the platform works! We would therefore like to congratulate Martijn and all investors with this fantastic result."


About Symbid
Symbid is the first investment platform where investors can directly invest from as little as € 20,-­‐ in the equity of start-­‐ups or existing businesses. Any entrepreneur is able to achieve growth or to raise capital via Symbid. Symbid recently reached the finals of the Shell Live Wire Award and is among the most innovative companies in the Netherlands.


About Martijn Arets and Brand Expedition
From Brand Expedition Martijn advises and inspires people and organisations in the areas of brand, strategy, entrepreneurship, innovation, new business models and social media. He does this through presentations, brainstorming sessions and consultancy. His book Brand Expedition was recently nominated by Sprout for the title of ABN AMRO Business Book of the Year.
For more information
www.symbid.com www.brand-­‐expedition.eu 

Best-selling author completes first global equity-based Crowdfunding campaign via Symbid

PR: "Brand Expedition goes to stock market"

“English edition will conquer the world”

Utrecht – In order to translate his successful book 'Brand Expedition, an expedition to Europe's most inspiring brands', Martijn Arets will, in the next 8 weeks, use crowdfunding in order to sell 1000 stocks of his book.

Last Monday, he used an old cargo bike to visit the place where the big boys play – or rather, sell their own stocks: Beursplein 5 in Amsterdam, near the Beurs van Berlage. Using a fun guerilla action, he created attention for his own shares. Investors, besides the standard share of 20% of the book- project, will get free books, access to exclusive presentations and Skype advice sessions of brand consultant Arets.

In 2010, Arets travelled across Europe in a old Volkswagen T2 camper van and interviewed the CEO's, founders and brand executives of 20 authentic European brands. He captured his experiences in the book Brand Expedition. In order to finance the translation and production, together with Symbid he initiated this crowdfunding campaign.

Arets: “Banks generally aren't in tune with what you do as an entrepreneur. The pro of crowdfunding is that shareholders become immediate ambassadors of your project. Because they share in the profits they're very motived to activate their own network. Investing is possible from €20 and after 7000 sold books after taxes, a break-even of their input is accomplished. In order to sustain the shareholders' interest in the long run, they automatically get a share of 10% in any of the following translations. Currently a Chinese translation is in consideration”.

45 million fans
To immediately put his English translation in the spotlights worldwide, Arets will challenge the fans of the visited brands (45 million on Facebook alone) to read a chapter about 'their' brand in front of a webcam. They will participate in the first online video book ever. Arets hopes that this action connects at least 1000 brand fans and will globally position his story.

Arets proved last year that he has a keen insight in how to use social media to create attention about his expedition and his book: he gathered nearly €1 million of free publicity. One example is a video he made with a secret camera where he, in different bookshops, bought his own books before they were actually on sale. The attention this video got on Twitter and other social media outlets, made sure that his book within a couple of days after the release was available in several bookshops.

Note for the editors: Martijn Arets is available for interviews and press photo's in high resolution are available through request. For more questions please contact him at: martijn@brand-expedition.eu.

Links:
- Youtube channel with video of e.g. ‘stockmarket’, ‘bookstore guerrilla’ and booktrailer
- Flickr channel Brand Expedition with lowres pictures and press photo's

PR: "Brand Expedition goes to stock market"