MicroVentures Raises $300,000 Fund To Invest In Facebook On Secondary Markets

Robin Wauters

Robin Wauters is the European Editor of tech blog The Next Web and lead editor of Virtualization.com. He was a senior staff writer at TechCrunch until his departure in February 2012. Aside from his professional blogging activities, he’s an entrepreneur, event organizer, occasional board adviser and angel investor but most importantly an all-round startup champion. Wauters lives and works in... → Learn More

Thursday, October 27th, 2011
microventures

MicroVentures, an online p2p investment service that aims to give accredited investors access to funding deals they might otherwise never see, has raised a $300,000 fund to invest in Facebook through the purchase of private company shares on secondary markets.

Bill Clark, founder and CEO of MicroVentures, says it took about 10 minutes for investors to commit $40,000 to the fund in the first ten minutes after the investment was made available on the crowdfunding site, which speaks volumes about how eager people still are for grabbing hold of a (albeit super tiny) slice of the Facebook pie prior to its IPO.

Thirty investors ultimately put up $300,000 in total through MicroVentures.

The Facebook investment fund was created by MicroAngel Capital Partners, an Austin-based VC management company founded by Clark.

Related: Private Stock Transactions Up 73 Percent This Year On SecondMarket


Company: Microventures
Launch Date: October 2009
Funding: $450k

Based in Austin, TX, MicroVenture Marketplace Inc.’s capital model allows investors to fund startup opportunities not typically available outside a traditional venture capital structure. Using its online peer-to-peer investment service, MicroVentures creates additional investment opportunities for accredited investors looking to make diversified commitments by pooling and connecting them with entrepreneurs, startups and small businesses looking to raise money.

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Company: Facebook
Website: facebook.com
Launch Date: February 1, 2004
IPO: NASDAQ:FB

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 1 billion monthly active users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original...

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