Crowd-Investing: Your first IPO
With LinkedIn, Groupon, and other tech companies in the news for going public, you can now pay attention to their IPO process and see the similarities to your crowdfunding strategy on Venture Bonsai. The motivations for IPO’s and crowdfunding are the same, and both involve drumming up demand, picking a price, and issuing securities to a large number of investors. Once your company makes it to an IPO (of course, if you decide to turn down all the acquisition offers) you will feel confident and in control, because hey, you’ve done this before.
The American IPO Process
1. Initiation
The IPO process is initiated by appointing roles to outside entities whose job it is to make the process run smoothly. Here, the company will decide on its underwriter and registrars.
2. Pre-Issue activities
The company now prepares its forms and documents. One such document is called the Prospectus, which is a part of the Due Diligence process, and contains all the facts an investor needs to make an educated investment. This document also fills a marketing role because the SEC limits the company’s marketing activities while it’s in the IPO process.
3. Filing the documents
The company then files its… Continue reading
Demonstrating your Startup's Social Proof
Angels, VC’s, and strangers who wish to take part in crowdfunding your company are much more likely to believe in your ability to deliver if you already have a successful company or an exit behind you. But how do you break into the funding market for the first time? Especially if you don’t have a referral from a high profile investor? The answer is to prove your intellect, trustworthiness, and work ethic through Social Proof.
Social proof can be crudely defined as saying, “Well, I know that guy’s not an idiot,” or, “hey, they all cant be idiots.” We use this to make decisions every day based on the size of the crowd or the authority of the person giving the review. For example, we take note if 6000 people give a book on Amazon a five-star rating, just as we take note similarly when we hear the book reviewer of the New York Times gives a book a top rating. But what does that mean for your startup on Venture Bonsai?
Demonstrating your personal Social Proof
Chances are, you’ve got a lot of social proof already out there by adding up the little stuff. LinkedIn have positioned themselves as the… Continue reading
Introducing Venture Bonsai Legal Framework
Venture Bonsai Legal Framework
The purpose of the Venture Bonsai Legal Framework is to provide a set of ready-to-use documents and a simple process to run a Share Issue to raise private capital for a growth company. The process is in compliance with European Union regulations and related national laws.
This framework is built in such a way that the Share Issue can be arranged within the service as easily as possibly while still following the regulation related to private placements within the European Union. The example documents have been built in such a way that they can modified to meet the minor differences in each national legislation. The example documents are built for companies domiciled in Finland.
Detailed and full version attachments (as referenced in this document) are available to Venture Bonsai customers and partners.
Preparing for the Investment Round
Preparation Phase within Venture Bonsai
The Venture Bonsai service guides you through each step while setting up your investment round. You will upload to the service the official documents mentioned below, have them checked by a Venture Bonsai authorised lawyer and you can start your investment round.
There are also other documents to be uploaded (such as business plan… Continue reading
It's All About Trust
When it comes to investing in start-ups, it’s all about trust. Do you feel confident that this team, company, and product will live up to its expectations? Even if you’re investing relatively small amount of money (say, for example 5.000€) it’s still a big amount that requires trust between both parties. It’s your money, after all.
What is trust, anyway?
Wikipedia defines trust as
- the willingness of one party (trustor) to be vulnerable to the actions of another party (trustee);
- reasonable expectation (confidence) of the trustor that the trustee will behave in a way beneficial to the trustor;
- risk of harm to the trustor if the trustee will not behave accordingly; and
- the absence of trustor’s enforcement or control over actions performed by the trustee.
Within the scope of Venture Bonsai, you probably would be interested in
- as an entrepreneur, do I trust certain person enough to let him to see my Investment Round material?
- as an entrepreneur, do I trust Venture Bonsai as a platform to run my investment round ?
- as an investor, do I trust certain person enough to invest in his company?
- as an investor, do I trust Venture Bonsai as a platform to invest through… Continue reading