SeedAsia, an equity crowd-funding site based in China, has just launched. The company is offering stakes in selected early-stage startups to people. “It’s kind of a hybrid between Kickstarter and private investment,” said co-founder Tom Russell. The startups to be listed would have ideally gone through some some sort of incubation program and would have shown promise. They can… → Read More
A lot of people don’t carry cameras anymore, now that they have smartphones. But that means that you could miss opportunities to capture great moments, especially when you’re missing out on the great optical zoom available on some more expensive or specialized dedicated camera devices. That’s what Snapzoom hopes to fix with its binocular mount for smartphone cameras, and the best part is that it’s… → Read More
When we first saw the Jamstik at CES this year we called it amazing. Now you can call it yours. → Read More
Sites like Kickstarter have been used to crowdfund a wide range of projects, but I don’t think they’ve ever done what Synergist is attempting today — they’ve never crowdfunded themselves.
The site was founded by 17-year-old Jared Kleinert, who described Synergist as a mix of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding for social enterprises (i.e., organizations that aim to do good, rather than make money… → Read More
Last month, we reported that Crowdtilt, the Y Combinator alum that launched just over a year ago with plans to become “the Kickstarter for any group,” had raised $12 million in Series A financing from a group of notable investors, including Napster, Causes and Airtime founder Sean Parker and Path’s Dave Morin. → Read More
Do you suffer from “sore elbows, wrists and hands from having to hold small and awkward shapes?” Have you found that “products are confusing to impossible to control?” Do you know what a phthalates is and are you embarrassed by the packaging of your favorite personal massager products? Has Revel Body got a product for you. → Read More
With the passage of the JOBS Act, the Crowdfunding Era began and since then these fund-raising platforms have been sprouting in every vertical — even education. Just two weeks ago, we announced the launch of AlumniFunder, which “gives alumni a platform by which they can invest in innovative projects created by students at their alma mater.” Today, we have another entry into the… → Read More
Last week, a young startup called Realty Mogul took home top honors at “Founder Showcase,” a Silicon Valley pitch competition and networking event hosted by TheFunded.com, in which eight early-stage startups showed off their wares in front of 400 investors and founders. → Read More
Long-time Shenzhen-based electronics manufacturer Ben Dolgin-Gardner took a look around at what he was building and decided to make a bit of a difference. His idea, Coconut Cases, isn’t particularly unique – (RED) did it before him – but he’s in the right place at the right time to pull it off. → Read More
AlumniFunder launched in beta this week with a simple mission: Help create a deeper relationship between current students and alumni, while supporting collegiate entrepreneurship and creativity. To do that, AlumniFunder wants to give alumni a platform by which they can invest in innovative projects created by students at their alma mater. Whether it be for a new science lab, natural language… → Read More
The “free” in Free Software refers to “freedom”, rather than cost. It is largely a happy coincidence that Free Software is available gratis. Copyleft licensing certainly helps, but there’s no overarching reason that Free-as-in-Freedom software need not cost anything. As Free Software has evolved and matured over the years, several major developmental archetypes have emerged. → Read More
Editor’s note: This is the second part of a two-part guest column by Zach Noorani.
Is angel capital an attractive asset class? Is the crowd capable of being good investors, willing to spend 20-40 hours doing due diligence per investment? These are critical questions to help determine just how big equity crowdfunding will become, right? I say no. → Read More
Today, TechCrunch has learned from sources that Crowdtilt has raised $12 million in Series A financing. It’s the startup’s second round of funding, following its $2.1 million seed round back in May, which it raised from SV Angel, Crunch Fund, Y Combinator partners Paul Buchheit, Alexis Ohanian, Harj Taggar and Garry Tan, and DCM and Felicis Ventures. → Read More
It’s not easy being a crowdfunding tiddler in a pond where sharks like Kickstarter and Indiegogo are known to swim. Which doubtless explains why a group of homegrown U.K. crowdfunding sites have banded together to launch a self-regulating trade body. The 12 founder members include startup seed funding platform Seedrs and video games funding platform Gambitious. → Read More
A new gifting startup called Aggregift is launching an entirely new way to purchase goods on Amazon. The company, which has been quietly running its beta tests with a few thousand users over the past several months, allows users to initiate crowdfunding campaigns for gifts, which involve posting the call for contributions to the recipient’s Facebook Timeline. → Read More
Any geek worth his fedora and duster will know the name Days of Wonder immediately. The company makes some of the best boardgames around (Cargo Noir needs to win an Emmy) and Small World is probably the best fantasy game I’ve played in a long time. Now you can take part in an effort to bring Small World 2 to a tablet near you. → Read More
When you think of crowdsourcing, you usually imagine something like the Pebble smart watch or the Misfit Shine – gadgets that are hard to build in mainstream ways but take off by sparking a groundswell of support. But what about a crowdfunded Tesla museum? Or how about a grocery store that uses no packaging? Those kinds of projects are what Slava Rubin, founder of Indiegogo, is most excited about… → Read More
Haven’t we all suffered enough abuse at the hands of Big Smart Watch? No? Well now there’s Buddy, a Bluetooth smartwatch that aims to solve the problems associated with all those other watches. Buddy is focused on social networking and notifications so it will ping you when your Facebook or Twitter feed is updated as well as send the standard call/text/calendar notifications you expect from a… → Read More
Rally.org, the U.S.-based crowdfunding platform designed for socially-minded causes, is taking its mission to Europe. Today, the startup is opening an incubator in Berlin, its first outside of the U.S., and on a limited beta will start to process donations made on its proprietary payment platform in euros, with the intention of adding British pounds and other currencies in the very near future. → Read More
The Death Star is undoubtedly a worthwhile undertaking. Sure, in the Star Wars films it’s generally depicted as an offensive weapon but it could have terrific value as a defensive platform, too. The government recently responded to requests from the general public that it look into constructing the massive, moon-sized space station, shutting down the idea because of a short-sighted “we don’t blow… → Read More
Online venture capital firm FundersClub is pioneering equity crowdfunding, and today demonstrated the value of bringing on dozens of investors rather than a handful. Ecommerce startup Soldsie just raised $425,000 from 72 investors, and hired one as its Chief Scientist. Yun-Fang Juan, a founding engineer of Facebook’s ads team, discovered Soldsie through FundersClub and now will build out Soldsie’s… → Read More
Our brothers and sisters over at Engadget are holding their first red hot, super exciting conference called Expand in SF in March. The event will feature all the boring, old commercial hardware you could imagine including the latest from all the hardware greats but, more important, they’re also reaching out to a contingent dear to my heart: crowdfunded gadgets. → Read More
Since launching in February, Y Combinator grad Crowdtilt has been on a mission to become the easiest way for friends and groups of people to raise money for any cause. Last month, the group-funding platform added deeper support for non-profits and charitable fundraising initiatives by enabling users to make tax-deductible donations to 501(c)(3) organizations and receive auto-generated… → Read More
A spot of consolidation in the crowded crowdfunding space today: two U.K. crowdfunding platforms, Crowdfunder and Peoplefund.it, have announced plans to merge, combining their technology and marketing platforms, branding and teams to create a single entity with “its own distinct British and community feel”, the pair said. Combined the two have more than over half a million unique monthly users. → Read More
Piggy-backing on the recent launch (and massive funding) of SoFi, a new startup is launching today that wants to breathe some fresh air into the broken, complex and mollasses-slow student loan system.
New York City-based CommonBond aims to bring the power of crowdsourcing to bear on student debt by connecting student borrowers and alumni investors and offering loans at a lower fixed rate than… → Read More
Since we first covered its launch back in February, Crowdtilt has been on a mission to become the easiest way for groups of people to collaborate around money, specifically fundraising, for any cause. Said in another way, Crowdtilt wants to become the go-to platform for the many types of group fundraising that don’t (or can’t) happen on crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter. Want to raise money… → Read More
Lumawake, an innovative iPhone dock designed to work with both 30-pin and lightning dock connectors, today kicks off its own pre-orders in a self-run crowdfunding attempt to bring its product to market. The team faced rejection from Kickstarter but now it’s back, and the team tells me they’re confident that going it alone in the manner of App.net and Lockitron will help make sure that Lumawake… → Read More
Several people have contacted me and asked whether such-and-such a game would work with crowdfunding, or whole sectors. Could educational games benefit from crowdfunding, for example. Or what about game-like projects, or gaming hardware innovations? The answers to these questions have little to do with the product itself. They are driven by what I call marketing stories. → Read More
Kickstarter today announced it will begin making it possible for projects to be based in the U.K. on its crowdfunding site beginning October 31. This marks the first time Kickstarter projects will be able to be built around bank accounts located outside of the U.S., and it should help the company continue to grow as it looks to refine its existing model and project preference. → Read More
The passage of the JOBS Act earlier this year cemented that not just in practice, but in policy. As a result, it’s been a huge year for crowdfunding platforms — especially Kickstarter, which has raised $50 million for games alone in 2012. But with the increased attention, we’ve started to spy potential holes in the crowdfunding model.
Two problems in particular stand out and two startups are… → Read More
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