Karsten Wenzlaff, Advisor
August 26th, 2025
Karsten Wenzlaff is a Crowdfunding and Fintech Expert from Germany. He is Secretary-General of Digit[...]
Category Archives: Online Funding / Investing Portals
Private Equity Crowdfunding Marketplace for Retail Investors InvestX Announces Beta Launch
Crowdfund Insider | | Dec 16, 2014
Initial USD $5.2 Million Seed Round Secured From Prominent Investors
InvestX Capital announced on Tuesday (December 16th) the beta launch of its cross-border private equity crowdfunding marketplace for U.S. and Canadian investors, opening up an asset class previously only accessible through larger (USD $1 million or higher) investments. For the first time, InvestX will provide accredited retail investors with direct access to high-quality private equity opportunities at low minimum investments (starting at USD $2,500), sourced and thoroughly vetted by a select group of partnering private equity firms.
The initial offering on the InvestX beta site allows accredited investors the opportunity to invest in Cleveland HeartLab’s Series C financing. Cleveland HeartLab (CHL) is a well-established, five-year old health sciences company known as one of the leading providers of comprehensive cardiovascular disease prevention, diagnosis and management services. CHL has already secured over USD $32 million in funding from institutional investors such as Excel Medical Ventures, Healthcare Venture Partners, Mutual Capital Partners, Cleveland Clinic, and one of the world’s largest healthcare companies. Through its private equity partner, Mutual Capital Partners, InvestX has secured a USD $1,000,000 allocation for InvestX members with an expected closing on January 15, 2015.
Related: Why Financial Firms are Joining the Crowd
Founder and CEO of InvestX Marcus New stated,“Private equity has long been used by institutions and ultra-high net worth individuals to add assets to their portfolios with traditionally higher returns than the public equity markets. Our goal is to democratize private equity investing – to provide every accredited investor with access to the same opportunities as the professional investor – and through InvestX, our private equity crowdfunding marketplace, there is an unprecedented opportunity to access established, high growth private companies that are already generating revenue.“
Earlier this year, InvestX closed a USD $5.2 million seed investment round from investors who support Mr. New’s vision. This included U.S. Global Funds, Meridian Funds, Pathfinder Asset Management, Mercury Capital, Mutual Capital Alliance and Stockhouse Publishing, along with a group of prominent angel investors. The private equity crowdfunding marketplace will use the funds to continue to build the InvestX platform and bring a wide variety of quality private equity opportunities to its members. Two additional deals are already sourced and will be available in early 2015.
An initial investor and U.S. Global Funds CEO Frank Holmes shared, “The passage of the JOBS Act has created a multitude of new investment opportunities, but high invested capital requirements can still be an issue for some ground floor opportunities. I was impressed with the structure of the InvestX marketplace and thought that the streamlined process offered on the platform would be appealing to accredited investors looking to diversify their portfolio.”
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The National Crowdfunding Association of Canada (NCFA Canada) is a cross-Canada crowdfunding hub providing education, advocacy and networking opportunities in the rapidly evolving crowdfunding industry. NCFA Canada is a community-based, membership-driven entity that was formed at the grass roots level to fill a national need in the market place. Join our growing network of industry stakeholders, fundraisers and investors. Learn more About Us | Crowdfunding | Support
LendingClub is really only crowdfunding lite
MarketWatch | By Tim Mullaney | Dec 11, 2014
You might save a little money, but you still have to go through a bank to use its services
If ever there were a market ripe for disruption, it would be the credit market circa 2008 through 2011. The mortgage market locked up. New-car sales fell by half. Even credit-card balances shrank by a quarter after four solid decades of 17% annual revolving-debt growth.
Through all of that, LendingClub Corp. the much-hyped “peer-to-peer lending” startup whose initial public offering yesterday valued the eight-year-old company at $5.4 billion, didn’t grow really at all. And that’s just the latest reason to beware of bankers bearing tales of hyper-growth and transformation.
Lending Club IPO Shows The Profit Potential For Financial Technology Investments
The company simply isn’t as transformational as it says it is. Its stock, I’ll wager, will pop in the short term without justifying its hype any time soon. And if I were investing in LendingClub, which despite what I’ve said so far is a perfectly nice company, I’d buy its debt rather than its stock.
The company also sells shares in the loans it makes, and those are as good a debt investment as its equity is risky.
The idea of LendingClub is to crowdfund lending and save people money. The San Francisco company kinda-sorta does that, for some people sometimes. The average loan it makes is $14,182 at 15% interest — which saves customers an average of 6.8 percentage points on card balances. Enough people like it that the company has expedited $3 billion in loans this year — about 215,000 folks, still a fly on the haunches of the $850 billion revolving-loan business.
But if this is crowdfunding, it’s crowdfunding lite. When consumers go to LendingClub, they actually apply for a loan from an honest-to-God bank, the very same institution they hit when they apply to finance a Dell computer. Only after they go through a fairly conventional underwriting process and the bank wants to move the paper into a secondary market does vox populi come into the process. It’s not fundamentally different than how mortgages and some credit-card receivables are securitized.
Understanding Alternative Finance: The UK Alternative Finance Industry Report 2014
The thing that bugs me, despite the very smart investors who think LendingClub is terrific, is that the company didn’t begin to make any material number of loans until it brought a traditional bank into its model in 2013. This is a very different plan than when peer-to-peer lending began around 2005. Back then, groups of lenders considered applications of individual borrowers. And that approach never got much market share.
I clearly recall my 2006 dinner with early Prosper lenders. It was a convivial market, aimed less at underpricing credit-card companies than at professionalizing the friends-and-family loan market. The funniest discussion of the night was about a mother of five who wanted a loan for breast implants. As it happened, she had very good credit: The line my editor rebelled at was the quote about “AA credit for DD boobs.”
So there really isn’t a big pent-up demand for crowdsourced credit. LendingClub’s edge is that investors who ultimately fund its loans accept a narrower profit margin than credit-card companies. The company makes its own money mostly from fees, about $143.9 million in revenue through nine months this year, for a net loss of $23.9 million but an operating cash flow of positive $35.4 million.
One reason it took a while for LendingClub to take off is that most consumers have better options, which will also inhibit its growth as the economy improves. While the 15% its average customers pay is less than many credit cards — the national average for fixed-rate cards last week was 13.02%, according to Bankrate.com — it’s three to four times more than the same consumer could pay by refinancing credit-card logjams using home equity. I get their solicitations myself — and recycle them.
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The National Crowdfunding Association of Canada (NCFA Canada) is a cross-Canada crowdfunding hub providing education, advocacy and networking opportunities in the rapidly evolving crowdfunding industry. NCFA Canada is a community-based, membership-driven entity that was formed at the grass roots level to fill a national need in the market place. Join our growing network of industry stakeholders, fundraisers and investors. Learn more About Us | Crowdfunding | Support
OurCrowd Global Investor Summit Enters Second Day: Four Million Dollars Already Invested in First Twenty-Four Hours as Accredited Investors Meet Top Startups
OurCrowd (Business Wire) | December 10, 2014
JERUSALEM--(BUSINESS WIRE)--OurCrowd announced that over $4 million has already been invested in the first day of its Global Investor Summit, which brought together almost 1,000 participants from 27 countries to Jerusalem.
“We are proud that $4 million was invested by accredited summit investors by the end of the first day.”
“Global equity crowdfunding reached a new level today, as the virtual world met face-to-face with some truly exciting companies,” said Jon Medved, founder and CEO of OurCrowd. “We are proud that $4 million was invested by accredited summit investors by the end of the first day.”
These investments join the $80 million that accredited investors have already invested through OurCrowd in 55 companies since launching in early 2013.
In the opening summit panel on “The Next Big Thing”, Rona Segev-Gal, General Partner at Pitango, congratulated OurCrowd on its success in becoming "the biggest venture capital investor in Israel” during the past year.
Save the Date!: Canada's First 2015 Canadian Crowdfunding Summit
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat addressed the summit by stating that he was “extremely pleased that OurCrowd chose to host its summit in Jerusalem because, through entrepreneurship, we’re strengthening ourselves and developing and creating a better future for our kids. OurCrowd gives entrepreneurs the opportunity to stay in the City of Jerusalem and work globally.”
Brig. Gen. (Res.) Dr. Daniel Gold, the “father of Israel’s Iron Dome”, received a standing ovation to a packed audience after an exclusive briefing on the performance of the missile defense system he helped to create. He said, "OurCrowd, like Iron Dome, is based on innovative principles and technology management, and I look forward to collaborating with the OurCrowd team in the near future."
Today, summit participants have fanned out across Israel in five different tours to view Israeli's tech sector up close, meeting with leading public companies such as Google, Mobileye, Check Point and Evogene, as well as OurCrowd portfolio companies, BioCatch, eVigilo, Covertix, MST, and BillGuard.
But the summit was not all work and no play: the first day of the summit concluded with a gala cocktail party at Jerusalem’s First Train Station, sponsored by the Jerusalem Development Authority and JNext. This party celebrated the rapid growth in Jerusalem’s entrepreneurial scene with over 100 new startups set up in Jerusalem in the last year alone. Noted Israeli singer/songwriter Meir Banai, backed by rocker Yehuda Katz, entertained the crowd with a selection of his classic hits as the summit participants partied into the night.
About OurCrowd
OurCrowd is the leading hybrid venture capital equity crowdfunding platform for accredited investors who wish to invest in Israeli and global early stage companies. Managed by a team of well-known investment professionals and led by serial entrepreneur Jon Medved, OurCrowd selects opportunities, invests its own capital and brings these startups to its accredited membership. Members choose those deals they invest in via OurCrowd-managed partnerships. OurCrowd investors must meet stringent accreditation criteria and invest a minimum of $10,000 per deal. OurCrowd provides post investment support to its portfolio companies, assigning industry experts as mentors and taking board seats. OurCrowd has raised over $80 million in equity crowdfunding for its 50 portfolio companies which include leading companies, such as: BillGuard, Consumer Physics (SCiO), BioCatch, Abe’s Market and ReWalk, OurCrowd’s first portfolio company to complete a successful IPO on the NASDAQ.
OurCrowd CEO Jon Medved was recently featured on CNN Business with Richard Quest. The full interview can be watched here.
For press materials click here.
For more information please contact Leah Stern at leah@ourcrowd.com / +972.54.341.4861.
Contacts
Press contact:
Leah Stern
Public Relations Director
T: +972.2.636.9352
C: +972.54.341.4861
F: +972.2.636.9301
E: leah@ourcrowd.com
The National Crowdfunding Association of Canada (NCFA Canada) is a cross-Canada crowdfunding hub providing education, advocacy and networking opportunities in the rapidly evolving crowdfunding industry. NCFA Canada is a community-based, membership-driven entity that was formed at the grass roots level to fill a national need in the market place. Join our growing network of industry stakeholders, fundraisers and investors. Learn more About Us | Crowdfunding | Support
How to Raise Capital But Preserve Your Equity: Royalty Based Crowdfunding (Interview With Arthur Lipper)
Huffington Post | Victoria Silchenko | Dec 3, 2014
While some might think that royalty based crowdfunding is a new sheriff in town, the truth is that selling a portion of a future sale (royalty) in return for an investment has been quite popular for many years in the pharmaceutical and oil & gas industries, as well as among artists, writers, movie makers and those who were pitching Friends and Family, aka non-accredited investors.
The main benefit for the investor is that he earns his regular income from gross revenues (not profits) as soon as the sale occurs and for the entrepreneur is that he is not giving up his equity while maintaining 100 per cent of an ownership.
With nowadays technology which keeps simplifying revenue management while making crowdfunding platforms as commodities (check out Invested.in if you are in desire to build your own), I believe royalty based crowdfunding is set to be one of the most popular models in the next two-three years.
So far we have a few market players in this particular space such as Quirky, TubeStart, AppsFunder, RoyaltyClouds, Lendpool.com and Gideen.com. But it looks like royalty funding is on the watch list of some of the most prominent financiers of the world.
While producing our annual Alternative Funding Forum, I've been pleased to have on-board Arthur Lipper - a world renowned financier and inventor, who created innovations such as Lipper Mutual Fund Performance Analysis and stock index futures. Arthur Lipper's most recent patented innovation - royalty finance - naturally made me want to ask him a few questions.
VS: Which industries & companies in your opinion would especially benefit from royalty crowdfunding?
AL: Royalties should only be sold by companies having, or realistically projecting, a fairly high profit margin. Royalties are deducted from revenues and therefore add to the expenses of running a business. Of course, the additional capital will allow for an expansion of the business, thereby probably increasing profitability. Technology related and service businesses lend themselves to royalty financing, as their margins tend to be higher than manufacturing companies and benefit disproportionately to increased revenues.
VS: What are the typical metrics royalty investors are claiming?
AL: We believe in longer-term royalties, or more than 10 years and as long as 20 years, in order for the percentage of the revenue paid to the royalty purchaser to be lower. In most cases, the longer the royalty payment period the lesser the percentage of revenues required to meet the demands of the investor in the royalty. Royalties should provide investors with more than a 20% Internal Rate of Return or IRR over the course of the royalty payment period. Royalties starting at say 5% can be reduced upon receipt of agreed levels of cumulative royalty payments. Investors will want to buy royalties from issuers having at least 10% annual increases in revenues.
View:
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Investments in crowdfunding platforms have already doubled this year
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Canadian Crowdfunding Directory
VS: What are the Security and Exchange current requirements on royalty financing and how are we to make sure to stay within its current ruling?
AL: The SEC has not issued rulings specifically impacting the public offering of royalties. Therefore, royalties which were offered to the public would require the preparation of a prospectus describing the royalty issuing company and all of the known risks, which could possibly harm the company or its ability to meet its contractual obligations regarding royalties, unless there was an applicable exemption. The initial activity regarding royalties will be in the creation of royalty income funds and possibly investment partnerships which will purchase royalties from privately owned companies. Pacific Royalties, which I have co-founded is likely to be one of the first royalty income funds. The Library section of PacificRoyalties.com has a full range of royalty related items.
VS: Can you give a specific example of a company that has raised capital via royalty financing based on your experience?
AL: The approach I was able to patent and regarding which I have filed a subsequent patent is new and contains unique elements. The following websites provide samples and templates as well a full description of the process. REXRoyalties.com, REXdebt-shareRoyaties.com, REXComparator.com and REX-PV.com. Eventually, there will be one or more royalty exchanges through which ownership interests in royalties may be traded. These exchanges will allow investors to receive a better and increasing level of return and a vast number of privately owned companies funding.
VS: What would be the best royalty structure and what factors should be taken into consideration?
AL: No two companies are alike and the amount, royalty duration, royalty rate and means of assuring contractual compliance are the four elements of a royalty transaction that need to be negotiated. For early stage companies I recommend the debt plus royalty approach. The royalty purchaser should be comfortable re the survival of the royalty issuing company and have a positive view as to the issuer's increasing revenues.
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The National Crowdfunding Association of Canada (NCFA Canada) is a cross-Canada crowdfunding hub providing education, advocacy and networking opportunities in the rapidly evolving crowdfunding industry. NCFA Canada is a community-based, membership-driven entity that was formed at the grass roots level to fill a national need in the market place. Join our growing network of industry stakeholders, fundraisers and investors. Learn more About Us | Support Canadian Crowdfunding.
Indiegogo Is Testing Optional Insurance Fees For Crowdfunded Products
TechCrunch | Jon Russell (@jonrussell) | Dec 2, 2014
This year has been a tricky one for crowdfunding site Indiegogo, thanks to a number of campaigns using its service to raise money for dubious projects (though there have been some cool uses). It looks like the company is responding with a new feature that offers backers some peace of mind about their investments.
The company is testing an ‘Optional Insurance’ fee that provides a refund if backers do not receive the final product within three months of the estimated delivery date. Indiegogo insurance is being tested on one project at this point — stress-management wearable Olive — where it offers potential peace of mind for a $15 fee on top of the product’s $129 backing price.
The company confirmed to TechCrunch that it is running this test, but it declined to discuss wider plans for insurance.
View: Tackling The Crowdfunding Credibility Gap: A Q&A With Dropkicker
“Indiegogo regularly develops and tests new features to meet the needs of both funders and campaign owners. This pilot test is currently limited to this individual campaign,” a spokesperson told us.
The introduction of insurance could be significant for Indiegogo, which is widely regarded as the second option for crowdfunding campaigns behind Kickstarter.
One reason for that differentiation is perhaps that Indiegogo is considered to be more relaxed when it comes to regulating and filtering its more fanciful projects/those that appear to be straight-up frauds.
Earlier this year, TechCrunch’s Matt Burns wrote about the risk of backing crowdfunded projects, highlighting a number of projects hosted on Indiegogo. In particular, he pointed out that Indiegogo’s ‘flexible funding’ option — which allows companies to collect their fundraising total in full, regardless of whether they hit their target raise, minus a fee for Indiegogo — can remove some of the accountability behind crowdfunding.
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The National Crowdfunding Association of Canada (NCFA Canada) is a cross-Canada crowdfunding hub providing education, advocacy and networking opportunities in the rapidly evolving crowdfunding industry. NCFA Canada is a community-based, membership-driven entity that was formed at the grass roots level to fill a national need in the market place. Join our growing network of industry stakeholders, fundraisers and investors. Learn more About Us | Support Canadian Crowdfunding.
Crowdfunding Comparison – The New Business Opportunity
Forbes | Trevor Clawson |Nov 28, 2014
“We are on the edge of something that is currently quite small but which has the potential to grow much, much larger.”
So says Richard Watts, founder and CEO of Nurturemoney.com, a newly minted aggregation website styling itself as the UK’s first independent comparison platform for the ever-expanding crowdfunding and peer-to-peer lending market.
Launched in mid-November and with 1,600 uses already registered, Nurturemoney has been designed to appeal both to investors and to businesses seeking cash to their projects. By pulling together information from a broad range of rewards, equity and debt-based crowdfunding platforms, the company offers a means to make a direct comparisons between the various players in terms of the rates on offer, the levels of funding typically provided and the most common business profiles.
Growing Complexity
Arguably the growing complexity of the UK Crowdfunding market cries out for aggregators and information providers who can help investors and businesses make sense of the options available.
For instance, on the investment side of the equation, most newcomers to the market will probably have pre-decided whether their interested lies in equity investment or making a peer-to-business loan, while others will be content with donation in return for a reward. But once they’ve made that choice, they face the task of a sifting through maybe a couple of dozen players within their preferred section of the market and weighing up what each as to offer. A would-be lender will want to know about the rates on offer, the timescales and the types of company that typically raise cash.
Meanwhile, fund-raising companies face a parallel research process as they try to identify the equity or lending platforms that will be most responsive to their pitches.
And within the broad ‘equity,’ ‘debt,’ ‘invoice trading,’ and ‘rewards’ categories, no two crowdfunding platforms are quite the same . For instance, in the equity sector, the likes of Crowdcube, Seedrs and Syndicate room each have a different approach to investor relations issues and to some extent cater for different types of investor.
Then there’s innovation. Over the last year or so, crowdfund and P2P pending platforms have sought to differentiate themselves either by targeting specific sectors such as renewable energy. Equally platforms are seeking to extend their appeal by by introducing new products or features, such as equity-platform Crowdcube’s recently launched mini-bonds. Meanwhile on the debt side, there have been efforts to de-risk lending. Assetz Capital has introduced a system of asking borrowers to put up security, while Lending Works, includes insurance doe lenders.
View: Rise of Peer to Peer Business Lending in the UK
In other words, this is a shifting landscape making sense of the market is not easy, creating an opening for information providers.
Nurturemoney’s approach echoes that of a great many price comparison websites in other sectors. Investors and Businesses choose a funnel and then narrow down their options through a series of filters. For instance, investors will choose drill down through questions such as: type of investment (equity/debt), country (UK, US, Germany), minimum investment, fees and secondary market. The outcome is a list o suitable providers with a clickthrough option to register with the appropriate platforms. At the moment, the purpose is to point users to suitable platforms and enable them to do some more in-depth research.
But it’s early days. “In a few weeks we’ll have live data from the participating platforms, providing information on the performance of platforms,” says Watts. “And we’re also introducing a function to let users rate the crowdfunders and make comments.”
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The National Crowdfunding Association of Canada (NCFA Canada) is a cross-Canada crowdfunding hub providing education, advocacy and networking opportunities in the rapidly evolving crowdfunding industry. NCFA Canada is a community-based, membership-driven entity that was formed at the grass roots level to fill a national need in the market place. Join our growing network of industry stakeholders, fundraisers and investors. Learn more About Us | Support Canadian Crowdfunding.
International Operators of Equity Crowdfunding Sites Beware — The SEC May Come After You
Huffington Post | Gary Emmanuel | Nov 25, 2014
Eureeca Capital had a great idea. Back in 2013 they launched a slick website that claimed to be the first global online crowdfunding equity platform for small and medium sized businesses. The website featured non-U.S. based companies that were offering to sell shares in exchange for investments for amounts as low as $100. Upon registration with the website, visitors to the website could gain full access to the offering materials of the companies and proceed to invest by depositing funds with Eureeca. The platform however suffered from a fatal flaw, it allowed U.S. persons to invest through Eureeca without any kind of restriction.
The U.S. strictly regulates the manner in which a website can be used to solicit equity investments in a company. Broadly speaking (and in the absence of the adoption of crowdfunding rules by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), a website platform that solicits investments in companies from U.S. investors needs to have procedures in place to ensure that only accredited investors (high net-worth investors that meet certain criteria) can access offering materials and invest under an applicable exemption from registration under the U.S. securities laws. These procedures have generally included having password-restricted access and verification of accredited investor status. None of these procedures were implemented by Eureeca.
The reason for the absence of these procedures was that Eureeca purported to restrict offerings through its platform to so-called "non-U.S. persons" - thereby attempting to avoid U.S. regulation. In its "Terms of Business", terms which an investor was required to agree to prior to registering, it explicitly stated that only non-U.S. persons are permitted to register as investors on the Eureeca website. Nevertheless, the website allowed U.S. persons to gain unfettered access to offering materials and to deposit funds with Eureeca for the purpose of investing. And it was this unfettered access that led to an SEC investigation and eventual enforcement action.
View: NCFA Launches Crowdfunding Standards Initiative
According to the SEC, as of May 2014, Eureeca permitted over 50 persons who selected the U.S. as their "country" to register with their website of which three ended up investing in companies through Eureeca. As a result, the SEC found that Eureeca willfully violated the U.S. securities laws and, among other things, fined them $25,000.
What do we learn from this then? Clearly it's not enough for an equity crowdfunding platform designed for non-U.S. investors to simply post a disclaimer on its website that U.S. persons are not permitted to invest. Substantive procedures need to be implemented to ensure that U.S. persons are actually prevented from accessing offering materials and investing. Fortunately for Eureeca, the SEC fine was not enough to put them out of business. Today, if you access the Eureeca website, a pop-up appears asking visitors to certify they are not U.S. investors, there is a red banner at the top of the site warning visitors that the securities and services of Eureeca are not being offered in the U.S. and in the FAQ section of the website it states that the site does not accept U.S. investors. Presumably, there are further procedures in place to verify any claims made by prospective investors that they are in fact non-U.S. persons.
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The National Crowdfunding Association of Canada (NCFA Canada) is a cross-Canada crowdfunding hub providing education, advocacy and networking opportunities in the rapidly evolving crowdfunding industry. NCFA Canada is a community-based, membership-driven entity that was formed at the grass roots level to fill a national need in the market place. Join our growing network of industry stakeholders, fundraisers and investors. Learn more About Us | Support Canadian Crowdfunding.
