I started giving loans through Kiva almost two years ago. About at the same time, after gathering some savings, I started investing again in the stock market.
Last month, I attended TEDxMadrid, where Nicolás Alcalá explained how a movie he and his team are working on (“El Cosmonauta”) will be financed through crowdfunding. I then discussed with a friend that precisely I was looking for a similar approach, but applied to general businesses: a kind of Kiva for for-profit start-ups.
Subsequently, I first found Kickstarter about a month ago through Fred Wilson (@fredwilson). However, in Kickstarter the funders of projects are not entitled to equity in the venture nor a share of the future profits. The funders get some merchandising or recognition for the helping hand they have given, depending on the amount they have invested.
Then I found GrowVC.
From what I gathered, this is more or less what I was looking for: a way to invest some small amount of cash (~1,000$ a year) together with other funders into a larger pool that will act as a Venture Capital operation, sharing the future profits of the business that was funded.
With this post I wanted to share these initiatives with you and also to explain what I was looking for. Now, let me throw an open question to readers: anyone knows a similar concept that I may be interested in? If so, please, let me know.
(Bear in mind that I haven’t got, yet, hundreds of thousands of Euros to invest following this approach… the larger part is invested in a much more Graham-like defensive approach)
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