WakaWaka raises €75.000 with crowdfunding

Sustainable business developers raise 75.000 Euro on Symbid and serve a 1.5 billion people market

Amsterdam, the Netherlands – February 2, 2012 - Off-Grid Solutions, a solar energy developer from the Netherlands, raised 75.000 Euro for their WakaWaka Solar Light using equity-based crowdfunding platform Symbid. The WakaWaka Light was able to attract 320 investors from all over the world. Off-Grid Solutions will use the 75.000 Euro to invest in solar LED-light development in developing countries. This success shows the promise of using crowdfunding as way of raising capital for small companies.

WakaWaka focuses on the 'base of the pyramid': the 1.5 billion people living without electricity. According to Off-Grid Solutions, their WakaWaka light will help people get out of poverty, breathe clean indoor air, get better school results and much more. The quality of the light is better, compared to the current kerosene-lights there are no toxic fumes, it prevents severe burn incidents, the LED light has no operating costs and climate change is suppressed. Not only is it environmental friendly, the WakaWaka solar LED-light provides 8 hours of bright light, 16 hours of reading light or 80 hours safety light and its battery is up to three years operational. It's no wonder that such a magnificent initiative has been fully funded in as little as 10 weeks.

Not only their product is well thought out, so is their crowdfunding strategy. Maurits Groen, one of the three founders, says: “After we used up most of our own savings, we needed additional funds for further development and pre financing initial order runs. We realized we could not and did not want to wait for the perfect moment to start talking to investors. I am fortunate enough to know a few media people who have given a significant boost to our campaign. But other than that it has been a lot of hard work. My fellow co-founders Camille van Gestel and Kim van der Leeuw have both put in a lot of effort making our campaign personal. Spreading the word on Facebook, Twitter and personal networks. Though the real work starts now, we made a good start through Symbid”

This crowdfunding transaction is special because all investors become actual shareholders in Off-Grid Solutions. Symbid, the platform used for this campaign, offers the first international equity based crowdfunding service in the world. Investors become actual owners of the company, and receive a return on investment in the form of dividends and have the ability to sell their shares. This way, everyone benefits.

About WakaWaka
WakaWaka is a highly efficient solar LED-light thanks to Dutch Intivation technology. Currently the WakaWaka team is working hard to service prospects from over 40 countries. Coming June the first WakaWaka’s will be received by off-grid families in Africa, India, Indonesia and elsewhere. For more information http://www.wakawakalight.com

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. For more information http://www.symbid.com

WakaWaka raises €75.000 with crowdfunding

Enviu breaks Dutch crowdfunding record

Sustainable business developer raises 100.000 Euro on Symbid

Enviu, a sustainable business developer from the Netherlands raised 100.000 Euro using equity-based crowdfunding platform Symbid. Enviu was able to attract 372 investors from all over the world andbreaks the national record. Enviu will use the 100.000 Euro to invest directly in new start-ups developed. This success shows the promise of using crowdfunding as way of raising capital for small companies.

Utrecht/Rotterdam, 07-01-2012 – Enviu calls it practical idealism: inspiring the crowd to combine innovation, sustainability and co-creation to develop solutions for environmental and social issues. These solutions are brought to the market. The first example was the Sustainable Dance Club. Its flagship product is a floor which generatesenergy by dancing on it. Three Wheels United, is another Enviu start-up, which improves the lives of auto-rickshaw drivers in India while reducing CO2 emissions.

Stef van Dongen, founder of Enviu, started this initiative in Rotterdam. Having a background in entrepreneurship (he started his first company at the age of 17), a Master in Global Business Society Management and with his belief in the crowd, he chose to gather capital through crowdfunding. “I believe radical change is needed to solve major issues such as waste, energy and healthy living. The power of the crowd is required to create sustainable solutions. Crowdfunding is a perfect example of using this power”, says the Enviu founder.

This crowdfunding transaction is special because all investors become actual shareholders in Enviu. Symbid, the platform used for this campaign, offers the first international equity based crowdfunding service in the world. Investors become actual owners of the company, and receive a return on investment in the form of dividends and have the ability to sell their shares. Korstiaan Zandvliet, CEO of Symbid, is excited about breaking the Dutch national record. “Enviu was a special project for us, because the founders made a conscious choice for crowdfunding. With this record we’ve shown that equity based crowdfunding can be an excellent addition to the current ways of how companies raise capital.”

The campaign led by marketing expert Kirsten Toeset, used social media to its fullest extent to make people familiar with the crowdfunding proposition. “We are so proud that so many people believe in Enviu and have invested in our world-changing start-ups, ” said Toeset. She adds: “Due to this overwhelming success we know that collaborative investing is the way to go, therefore we plan to offer the opportunity to directly invest in our projects with our very own crowdfunding platform in the near future”.

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About Enviu
Enviu develops innovative solutions to environmental and social issues and introduces these to the market. We collaborate with a large group of young entrepreneurial people, senior executives, corporate partners and universities to co-create these innovative businesses. For more information http://www.enviu.org

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. For more information http://www.symbid.com

Enviu breaks Dutch crowdfunding record

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"

“ Equity or Debt?” the Next Step in Crowdfunding

Last year it became clear that Crowdfunding is becoming big business. With the rise of Crowdfunding platforms all over the world, it seems valuable to take a closer look at the future of the industry and the way Crowdfunding can contribute to a healthy entrepreneurial climate. In my opinion it all comes down to what all these platforms actually deliver to project owners or nascent entrepreneurs. In these terms we can roughly define three kinds of platforms:

1. Crowdfunding as a method for sponsorship with a non-financial return
An example of such a platform is the highly successful site www.kickstarter.com , here you can pledge money to projects of your choice and in return you receive a prototype or some sort of non-financial return. The return is based upon your financial involvement in the project and is set by the project owner.

2. Debt-Crowdfunding with a financial return (P2P-lending)
Lately many P2P lending platforms are using Crowdfunding for financing debt in start-ups, although one can argue that a start-up (or actually a project that isn’t a company yet) seems to benefit from this availability of capital the opposite seems to be true. By financing a start-up project with debt it seems that irrational returns to crowdfunders are required to hedge the associated risk. This trend we do see also in platforms for micro financing, where entrepreneurs in developing countries are paying up to 1,5-2% interest per month, equaling 20% interest on a yearly basis. Thereby some platforms offer the opportunity to project owners to set interest rates themselves, offering interest returns up to 20%! Obviously a sweet prospective for potential investors, however a personal credit is cheaper and seriously how confident are you in an entrepreneur that lets his net profit be vaporized by interest payments?

3. Equity based Crowdfunding with a potential financial return and ownership
Although by many labeled as impossible due to financial regulations, this year we will see the first equity based platforms brought to market. These platforms will enable direct investments in and direct returns from new start-ups or existing companies. As return Crowdfunders become owner of the company. In comparison to Debt-Crowdfunding a far better model as it perfectly aligns interests of potential investors and the entrepreneur. Due to the multiple roles of the investors (first customers, supplier or crowdsourced human resource of the company) and the open relationship with the entrepreneur we will see the creation of the ultimate Stakeholder model.

The third category will obviously contribute to a healthier entrepreneurial climate, and could well be the solution for closing the equity gap and our drift away from the old-fashioned Shareholder model. But until that is the case, many hurdles still stand in the way of the global dispersion of these platforms. For example the latest Goldman deal (the private placement of Facebook shares) was recently pulled back and was no longer offered to US citizens due to the tremendous media attention it got. This had everything to with SEC Regulation D, stating that private placements like “the Facebook deal” cannot be the subject of advertising, general promotional seminars or public meetings in connection with the offering.

As equity based crowdfunding comes down to exactly that, the US market (still one of the most entrepreneurial markets in the world) will be a major hurdle to overcome, a hurdle that might be unable to take. However the strict SEC regulations can’t withhold the development and dispersion of equity based crowdfunding platforms and the rise of the professional social funding industry that is equity driven.

By Korstiaan Zandvliet

Korstiaan Zandvliet holds an MSc in New Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship and has a background in Sociology and Business Administration. He is a frequent writer of expert blog articles on Social media, Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding. After holding a position as Marketing Manager for a Dutch software start-up, he co-founded a company called Symbid. 

Symbid is a radical new innovation which enables (nascent) entrepreneurs to overcome financing problems for their start-up or small business. Symbid focuses on entrepreneurial finance needs up to € 2.5 million by utilizing the concept of Crowdfunding in a radically new way. In contrast to currently available Crowdfunding sites, Symbid developed a financial and legal framework which allows Crowdfunders to actually become a shareholder of the offered Crowdfunding propositions. For more information www.symbid.com .

“ Equity or Debt?” the Next Step in Crowdfunding