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
Israeli crowdfunding co OurCrowd raises $72m
Globes | Gali Weinreb | Sep 21, 2016
The Jerusalem-based crowdfunding platform has to date invested over $300 million in 100 portfolio companies and funds.
Israeli global equity crowdfunding platform OurCrowd has closed $72 million in Series C funding. Participants in this latest round include financial institutions, family offices, and private investors from five continents.
OurCrowd CEO Jon Medved said, “OurCrowd has grown exponentially since our launch in 2013 to become the leading global platform for Equity Crowdfunding. This transformative Series C funding will allow us to take advantage of the growing investor interest in quality equity crowdfunding and further expand our global operations. One half of the round will be invested in the expansion of our 7 global offices, and further developing our technology platform. The other half of the Series C funding will be used to make sure that each and every company which raises funding on our platform receives participating investment from the General Partner on the same terms as the crowd. This new capital will help us hit our goal of investing $1 billion annually by 2020.”
See:
Jerusalem-based OurCrowd has to date invested in 100 portfolio companies and funds on its platform. Total investment in companies and funds now exceeds $300 million. OurCrowd has had nine exits to date from its portfolio investments: two IPO’s and seven acquisitions. These include ReWalk (IPO: Nasdaq), Crosswise (bought by Oracle), Replay Technologies (bought by Intel), and NextPeer (bought by Viber).
OurCrowd portfolio company Consumer Physics CEO Dror Sharon said, “OurCrowd was one of the earliest investors in the SCiO vision. We have grown up together and come a long way, from their initial investment of $325,000 in Consumer Physics to several million dollars invested by OurCrowd into Consumer Physics so far. But what makes OurCrowd so important for Consumer Physics is not just the money, but the assistance and worldwide connections they make for our company, on a weekly and sometimes daily basis.” According to Dr. Richard Swart, former Director of Crowdfunding Research at UC Berkeley, "OurCrowd continues to lead the equity crowdfunding market not just in numbers but in the quality of their deal flow and number of their exits. They have consistently proven that crowdfunding can deliver not only the best deals but also healthy returns. OurCrowd's impressive new funding round should enable them to address the considerable challenge of scaling up their business to the billion-dollar level."
“We understand the ambitions of startups and emerging enterprises and want to help them grow into sustainable businesses. We look forward to working closely with OurCrowd to further develop their platform to support the startup ecosystem both in Singapore and the broader Asian market,” said Janet Young, Managing Director of Group Channels and Digitalization at UOB Group, one of Singapore’s leading banks. “Our investment into this Series C funding for OurCrowd reinforces our commitment to supporting startups and small businesses.”
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A Personal Perspective on Title III Investment Crowdfunding
Crowdfund Insider | | Sep 9, 2016
“So why did you leave law to pursue crowdfunding?”
Over the past couple years, I’ve received this question more than any other. Prior to starting NextSeed in 2014, I was a lawyer for over 7 years specializing in private equity fund formation and private investments. I left my legal practice, and my amazingly talented colleagues left their established careers in law, finance, marketing and technology because we all believed that investment crowdfunding can fundamentally change how the private capital markets work for small businesses and small investors.
We came together to try to build our crowdfunding platform into a sustainable small business investment marketplace, where we could help connect businesses with people in their community to create opportunities for everyone.
The 28 million small businesses in the US drive the US economy, accounting for 54% of all US sales volume and creating 66% of all new US jobs since the 1970s. Despite serving as the backbone of every community and the literal grounds upon which people congregate and share their life stories, small business financing has largely been restricted to institutional or wealthy private investors.
On the flip side, 97% of all Americans are non-accredited investors who have had limited investment options to plan their future. We believe investment crowdfunding can change this reality for the better. In the first 90 days since Regulation Crowdfunding went live, there’s already been tremendous activity and interest across various Reg CF funding portals. We’ve seen increasing demand on NextSeed as well – over the past year 11 businesses crowdfunded over $2 million in debt through our debt crowdfunding platforms (prior to launching our national funding portal, we had launched a Texas-only portal in 2015 pursuant to Texas intrastate crowdfunding rules), and substantial repayments have already been made back to the investors on our platforms.
During my legal career in private equity, I witnessed first-hand the immeasurable power of information and capital when PE firms were able to act upon them quickly. The global PE industry has grown into a multi-trillion-dollar market today because it solved real problems for businesses (lack of access to capital) and investors (lack of access to sufficient investment opportunities) that weren’t being fully addressed by the public markets.
However, the PE industry was limited to Accredited Investors only and therefore the focus was on the capital needs of large or hyper growth-oriented companies that can satisfy the return expectations of large investors. As a result, the vast majority of small businesses and small investors in the US are woefully underserved by our current financial system.
See: SEC Approves Title III of JOBS Act, Equity Crowdfunding with Non-Accredited
So when the JOBS Act was announced in April 2012, I was genuinely blown away. Theoretically, small businesses could now leverage technology and the internet to raise capital directly from anyone, and small investors could access many more investment options than the stock market.
My ultimate eureka moment occurred in December 2012 when I had the opportunity to visit Bangladesh to see microfinancing in action.
By any measure, Bangladesh is a developing nation. Children walked barefoot on dirt roads and rusted sheet metal mounted on wooden posts passed for roofs on family homes. And yet, I saw with my own eyes how an innovative alternative financing structure like microfinancing was creating opportunities for local entrepreneurs and growing their local economy, supported by other members in their community and the microfinancing lender who kept account of the borrower’s success by pen and paper. Even without a sophisticated banking system or regulatory structure, community-based microfinancing has proven to be a viable mechanism to fuel local economic growth in many developing countries.
So if this simple system works in unsophisticated markets, just what might be possible in the US if community-based financing could be structured, regulated and administered using the latest technology? The JOBS Act legally provided the framework to test these ideas for the first time in US history, and we were determined to find out.
Check out:
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Startups navigate regulatory patchwork amid new equity crowdfunding rules
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Expert FAQ: What Should Investors Know about Equity Crowdfunding?
After carefully contemplating how the proposed JOBS Act provisions could be effectively utilized in practice, we started our platform with a focus on debt financing for Main Street small businesses (restaurants, cafes, hospitality businesses, etc.). Many of these businesses are not typically looking to raise massive amounts of capital by selling equity, but need relatively small amounts to expand or establish their business. For many of these small businesses, however, traditional financing has been getting more difficult to access in the aftermath of the Great Recession.
Ironically, big banks have become even bigger (the top 6 banks now control over 67% of the entire US banking industry assets). Due to increased compliance and operational costs, many big banks are focusing on more profitable capital allocation from their balance sheets than making small business loans. A multitude of alternative lenders and merchant cash advance services have swooped in to fill the void, sometimes causing more harm than good for the small businesses that utilize these services.
In this context, debt crowdfunding allows small businesses to obtain flexible financing while showcasing their business to the public and establishing trust with their investors. Even the individuals who invest amounts as small as $100 can become loyal customers and brand ambassadors for the local businesses they invest in as they develop an emotional connection with the businesses they support. On NextSeed, businesses are also required to make monthly payments back to their investors, thereby reducing their overall risk profile (e.g., relative to equity investments that may not pay out until a liquidity event occurs years down the line). In turn, based on member feedback we now understand that our members are drawn to small business investing because it offers a level of transparency and simplicity unavailable in most other investment options.
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The National Crowdfunding Association of Canada (NCFA Canada) is a cross-Canada non-profit actively engaged with both social and investment crowdfunding stakeholders across the country. NCFA Canada provides education, research, leadership, support and networking opportunities to over 1300+ members and works closely with industry, government, academia, community and eco-system partners and affiliates to create a strong and vibrant crowdfunding industry in Canada. Learn more at ncfacanada.org.
White Label Crowdfunding 101: Part II – Players & Profits
Crowdfund Insider | Bret Conkin | Sept 9, 2016
So you want to start a Crowdfunding Portal…
In White Label Crowdfunding 101: Players & Profits, (Part II of our three-part series) we will introduce some of the primary white label vendors, sample sites and criteria for vendor selection to help you navigate the options.
In Part I Pros and Cons, we covered how white label crowdfunding works, benefits, applications and pros and cons versus building custom solutions. In Part III, Marketing & Ops, we will cover advice for the successful management and marketing of your new crowdfunding platform.
See: Crowdfunding Platform Patreon Raises $30M in Series B Funding
The Players (General Vendors)
A) Katipult (Calgary, Canada | Prague, Czechia)
Positioning: Crowdfunding software for private capital markets. Compliant platforms active in over 20 unique regulatory environments.
Roots: Custom software development house JOI Media.
“We have been building, maintaining, and iterating sophisticated crowdfunding software systems for private capital markets for over 8 years. We are a company that prides ourselves on acting as a technology partner rather than a software vendor, which is exactly what our clients are looking for.”
Key Features:
- Complete White Label Platforms since 2008
- Real Estate or Investment Crowdfunding (Equity or Debt)
- Reg D 506 b and c, Reg S, Reg CF, Reg A+ and Intrastate (USA)
- Compliant for Canada, UK, Australia, Italy, France, Africa, others
- Robust investor, issuer and administrator tools
- Many 3rd party integrations
Geography: US, Canada, UK, Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, Middle East.
Applications: Real Estate Crowdfunding, Equity & Debt Syndication, Investor Management, Private placements, Listings.
Sample platforms: InvestaCrowd, IntroCrowd, BrickRaise
Other Nuggets:
“Many of our clients use the software for operational efficiencies as we streamline many pain points in both the capital raising and investor servicing processes.”
Claim track record of ROI in as little as 6 months.
B) CrowdEngine (Salt Lake City, UT)
Positioning: A white label solution without compromising customization. Offer the most solutions in industry.
Key Features:
- Compliance EngineTM, a unique equity crowdfunding rules engine to let clients configure as they see fit.
- Robust equity feature set including back-office, payments, 3rd party integrations.
- Conduct offerings for national, intrastate and international rules all at the same time on same portal.
- Easy, step-by-step checkout and dashboards.
- Drag and drop website builder/CMS.
- Dedicated launch manager, tools and support.
Roots: Started in 2012. Built ground up, scalable white label solution. Founders have online marketing backgrounds.
“CrowdEngine saw the need when we started in 2012 To provide a scalable, compliant solution to meet market demand.. which is why our technology is so superior, it’s built from the ground up as a white label platform.”
Geography: US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, other English speaking countries.
Applications: Equity crowdfunding, Real Estate crowdfunding, Single-raise campaigns, Perks, Non-Profit.
Sample platforms: Florida Funders, CrowdOut Capital, Crowdventure
Other Nuggets: Claim 150+ portals launched.
C) Improve In (Buenos Aries, Argentina)
Positioning: Rapid deploy crowdfunding/crowdlending functionality.
Roots: Customer software development house and certified partner for Crowd Valley API.
“The solutions we provide can me implemented in any scenario or sector (real estate, p2p lending, etc.). We believe the current markets are changing and need solutions to be implemented very fast in order to change their strategies. “
Key Features:
- White label product for fast Minimum Viable Product (MVP) implementations since 2015.
- User-friendly front-end web platform for acquisition and investor management.
- Web platform connects to Crowd Valley API for compliance support and workflows.
- Crowd Valley backend API has over 100 enterprise clients
Wide range of programming languages and technologies offer extensive customization - Wide range of programming languages and technologies offer extensive customization
Geography: US, UK, South America, Latin America, other English/Spanish speaking countries.
Applications: Investment crowdfunding (Equity and debt), IT Solutions, Business process consulting, Outsourcing and recruiting, Training
Sample platforms: CrowdBuilt
Other Nuggets:
“We offer the capability to move to a fully custom solution in the future, if it suits the client.”
The Players – Real Estate Only
See: Should I invest in crowdfunded real estate?
D) GroundBreaker (New York, NY)
Positioning: A Launchpad for real estate ventures. White label platform for real estate capital raisers to market their deals, raise money and manage investors.
Roots: Pivot in 2014 from initial marketplace offering.
“While running a real estate crowdfunding marketplace, we were not able to accommodate every deal that was pitched to us… Clients asked us if they could license our software to streamline their own fundraising operations without depending on their deals being approved by a third party and while protecting their intellectual property. We realized that in the not so distant future, virtually all real estate capital raisers would adopt a similar technology. So we made a full pivot.”
Key Features:
- Complete White Label Platform
- Real Estate only (equity or debt)
- Compliance for Reg A, 506 (b) and (c), Reg S, Title III or Intrastate
- Investor verification, escrow, online distributions, stock certs, audit trails
- Custom web design and programming available
- 30 day turnaround for web design
Geography: US, some other English speaking countries.
Applications: Real Estate Crowdfunding, Investor Management, Private placements.
Sample sites: Commercial Funding Exchange, VestMunity, CrowdTrustDeed
Other Nuggets:
Offer SaaS model where capital raisers can operate on a subdomain and launch a deal in under 30 minutes.
E) Investor Management Services (Charlotte, NC)
Positioning: Offer tools that help Commercial Real Estate (CRE) owners manage their assets and investors more effectively and add efficiency to back office functions.
Roots: Commercial Real Estate Company. Part of Quiet Stream Financial portfolio of companies.
“The IMS Platform was initially developed in 2014 to solve one main problem. There is a lack of transparency between sponsors and investors. In today’s world everything is managed and monitored online: bank accounts, stocks, 401k, etc. Why not commercial real estate investing?”
Key Features:
- Focus on commercial real estate owners
- Robust feature set for investment workflow, management, reporting
- Investor dashboards, document access, CRM and activity tracker
- Distribution waterfalls and processing
- Sponsor dashboards, portfolio valuation, loan tracking
Geography: USA.
Applications: Commercial real estate, Investor management, back-office.
Sample clients: Phoenix Investment Funds, Aion Partners, Pensam Capital.
Other Nuggets:
Over 100 commercial real estate owner customers with $77B in combined assets under management.
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The National Crowdfunding Association of Canada (NCFA Canada) is a cross-Canada non-profit actively engaged with both social and investment crowdfunding stakeholders across the country. NCFA Canada provides education, research, leadership, support and networking opportunities to over 1300+ members and works closely with industry, government, academia, community and eco-system partners and affiliates to create a strong and vibrant crowdfunding industry in Canada. Learn more at ncfacanada.org.
Seedrs Announces First-ever Portfolio Results with Overall 14.44% IRR (Annualized Rate of Return)
Mondovisione | Seedrs News | Aug 7, 2016
- Seedrs has today published its first Portfolio Update, looking at the characteristics and performance of the 253 deals funded on Seedrs platform between its launch in July 2012 and the end of 2015.
- Landmark analysis shows for the first time that, on a fair value basis, equity crowdfunding through Seedrs has produced better annualised rates of return (IRRs) than most other asset classes.
- Platform-wide IRR increases from 14.44% to 41.87% when impacts of SEIS and EIS tax reliefs are taken into account.
- Investors with portfolios of 20 or more investments have outperformed the market on average, with average IRRs of 15.01% (43.39% when tax-adjusted).
- Valuation process confirmed by Ernst & Young LLP (EY) as conforming to the industry-standard International Private Equity Valuation (IPEV) Guidelines.
Seedrs, Europe’s No. 1 equity crowdfunding platform, has today published an in-depth, ground-breaking analysis of the deals funded on its platform.
See:
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Are you ready to dive into equity crowdfunding?
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Equity Crowdfunding in Canada and The Start-up Exemption (Q & A)
Its Portfolio Update looks at the characteristics and performance of the 253 deals funded on the Seedrs platform between its launch in July 2012 and the end of 2015. In addition to revealing useful information about the types of deals funded through Seedrs, the Portfolio Update shows that Seedrs investments have, on a fair value basis, outperformed most other asset classes.
Highlights include the following:
Deal Characteristics
- Roughly 40% of Seedrs’s deals have been for digital businesses, and 20% for non-digital. The remaining 40% have been hybrid digital/non-digital models.
- Nearly 60% of its deals have been for B2C businesses, with 30% for B2B ones and the remaining 10% for businesses with both B2C and B2B models.
- Of Seedrs’s 15 sectors, the three most popular in terms of number of funded deals have been Food & Beverage (11% of deals), Finance & Payments (11%) and Travel, Leisure & Sport (10%).
Investment Performance
- The platform-wide internal rate of return (IRR), which means the annualised performance of all 253 deals in terms of share price appreciation (net of fees), as of 31 July 2016 was 14.44% on a non-tax-adjusted basis. When the impacts of tax reliefs and liabilities are taken into account, this goes up to 41.87%.
- Investors who have built portfolios of 20 or more investments have, on average, outperformed the overall market. They have achieved an average 15.01% nontax- adjusted IRR (tax-adjusted: 43.39%).
- Businesses with hybrid digital/non-digital elements to their models have performed better than pure digital and pure non-digital businesses on average, achieving a non-tax-adjusted IRR of 16.88% (tax-adjusted: 42.78%).
- Businesses with both B2B and B2C models have outperformed pure B2B and B2C businesses on average, with an 18.27% non-tax-adjusted IRR (tax-adjusted: 41.74%).
- The three best performing sectors to date have been Food & Beverage, with a 22.77% non-tax-adjusted IRR (tax-adjusted: 49.73%); Home & Personal, with a 17.79% non-tax-adjusted IRR (tax-adjusted: 57.76%); and Finance & Payments, with a 16.91% non-tax-adjusted IRR (tax-adjusted: 43.20%).
Ernst & Young LLP (EY) reviewed the procedures and processes used by Seedrs for determining the estimates of fair value used to calculate the investment performance numbers, and EY considers that they are in line with the industry guidance set forth in the International Private Equity Valuation (IPEV) Guidelines.
It is worth observing that Seedrs was able to obtain much of the information required to make these fair value determinations, in a robust and verifiable way, by exercising the information rights it holds in its capacity as nominee for each investment. One of the benefits to investors in Seedrs acting as nominee—and entering into subscription and/or shareholders agreements with each investee company—is that the platform has reliable access to ongoing information about the performance of the investments. Platforms and networks that do not have the comprehensive information rights granted in these agreements do not have access to the same level of information.
Jeff Lynn, CEO and Co-founder of Seedrs comments: “The release of this Portfolio Update is momentous for Seedrs. I co-founded the business in 2009 because I am a strong believer that a portfolio of early-stage investments can produce great returns for investors large and small. Now, for the first time, we have the data to prove it. The Seedrs portfolio has achieved an IRR in excess of nearly every other asset class, and that’s even without taking into account the impact of tax reliefs. As importantly, our active investors have shown that, on average, they can beat the market, using Seedrs to build portfolios of outperformers. It is difficult to overstate the importance of this data: it is a game-changer for us and for the many investors from all over Europe (and, soon, the United States) who allocate capital through our platform.”
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The National Crowdfunding Association of Canada (NCFA Canada) is a cross-Canada non-profit actively engaged with both social and investment crowdfunding stakeholders across the country. NCFA Canada provides education, research, leadership, support and networking opportunities to over 1300+ members and works closely with industry, government, academia, community and eco-system partners and affiliates to create a strong and vibrant crowdfunding industry in Canada. Learn more at ncfacanada.org.
Crowdfunding app Tilt is finally going after Venmo
Yahoo Finance | Daniel Roberts | August 9, 2016
Two years ago, when the crowdfunding app Tilt had just scored a key partnership to be the default payment system for ESPN’s fantasy football and basketball leagues, co-founder and CEO James Beshara said in a Fortune interview that Tilt wasn’t really competing with the red-hot payments app Venmo, since Tilt was aimed at collecting money from a group. He also argued Tilt felt more social.
“Venmo works for one-to-one, but when you really want a social product,” he said, “it’s like the difference between e-mail and Facebook.” The suggestion: Venmo can do its friend-to-friend thing, while Tilt will stay in its lane of group payments.
Now, four years after Tilt’s founding, it is finally going straight after Venmo, as any user could have foreseen. Tilt announced on Tuesday it is adding a 1:1 payments option,
“making it easier for users to automatically send and request money on a more bite-sized scale,” a spokesperson says, “from sending money to a friend for rent or a round of drinks, to requesting money for a movie ticket or last night’s Uber.”
Tilt launched in 2012, has raised a fat $62 million in venture funding from the likes of Marc Andreessen, Ron Conway, Sean Parker, and the rapper Nas, and it is seeing 41% growth each month on college campuses, where the app has caught on thanks to a student ambassador program. But this will be Tilt’s true coming out party.
Tilt originally worked like this: You are holding an event (one of the most popular uses: kegger), or buying a gift, or ordering merchandise, and need to collect money from a group of people. You set a minimum target amount, and when the group hits the target (when it “tilts,” get it?) everyone gets charged. It isn’t unlike a Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign, but more utilitarian than artistic (though some brands have used Tilt to gauge interest in a new product). Some have called Tilt “micro-crowdfunding.” The funding can take place on Tilt’s web site or its mobile app.
The group focus helped Tilt gain steam among millennials. The service is in nine countries and won’t share users or revenue, but says it is growing its user base 4x year over year.
If you haven’t heard of Tilt, it is likely because you don’t often have a need to solicit money from a group, or when you do, you use a more traditional method. (Office NCAA pool? Collect cash from everyone in person.) Or you could be using Venmo, which, even though it operates on one-to-one transactions, allows you to enter an amount and then charge multiple friends the same amount at the same time. This couldn’t have helped Tilt much.
Adding the Venmo-like feature will elevate Tilt to the next level of utility. But competing with Venmo, which is owned by PayPal (after PayPal acquired Venmo parent company Braintree in 2013), will be no picnic. Venmo’s transaction volume grew 154% in the Q1 of this year to $3.2 billion. As Re/code pointed out, Venmo is “growing ridiculously fast.“
But if Tilt can convert its college students away from Venmo, it could become a one-to-one payments player quickly. As Tilt began to launch into more international markets, “We kept getting the request from our users to add in 1:1 payments,” says Beshara, who avoids naming Venmo specifically. “Then we looked at the data, and almost 20% of our usage in the UK was due to people bending Tilt, an app built for more social and group-oriented activity, for 1:1 payments.” That is: Tilt users were already trying to use Tilt as a Venmo anyway. Tilt began testing a 1:1 option in January, and among the testers, it led to a 34% increase in group Tilts.
Venmo isn’t the only competitor in the peer-to-peer mobile payments game. There’s Xoom (also owned by Venmo), Square Cash, Google Wallet, TransFast, Dwolla, Circle (which uses the bitcoin blockchain), and TransferWise (for sending money internationally only), to name a few.
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The National Crowdfunding Association of Canada (NCFA Canada) is a cross-Canada non-profit actively engaged with both social and investment crowdfunding stakeholders across the country. NCFA Canada provides education, research, leadership, support and networking opportunities to over 1300+ members and works closely with industry, government, academia, community and eco-system partners and affiliates to create a strong and vibrant crowdfunding industry in Canada. Learn more at ncfacanada.org.
Rubsun Ho wants Crowdmatrix to be the “AngelList of Canada”
Betkit | | Aug 8, 2016
As a co-founder of Cognition LLP, Rubsun Ho has worked with many startups trying to get their business off the ground. While Ho worked with these companies and heard their stories, Ho thought that the process of finding funding — including meeting and pitching investors — seemed inefficient.
“It struck me as odd that given the advances of the internet, the process was still so old-school and bricks and mortar in terms of finding investors for your startup,” said Ho. “You can find a stranger willing to rent you their place or drive you places, you can find someone willing to rent you space in another country, but you can’t find someone sitting next door who might take a chance to help you fund business.”
“We have an overarching goal to build a robust funding ecosystem to get more companies funded.”
For the past year and a half, Ho has been quietly working on the “AngelList of Canada” to bring the ease of connecting through the internet to the investment world. After leaving Cognition LLP in October 2014, Ho is now acting as CEO of Crowdmatrix, an online investment crowdfunding platform allowing accredited investors to find deals in the Canadian ecosystem.
See: 8 emerging sectors in fintech that global investors should explore now
According to Ho, part of the reason why the platform took so long to launch was just trying to go through the regulatory process, which in itself took a year. Part of the concern from regulators is that it would be easy for people to run fake campaigns and take money.
“We have to be registered as an exempt market dealer in Canada, which in and of itself isn’t a difficult thing, but when you add the internet aspect to it, regulators get a little bit worried so the process for us was pretty frustrating,” said Ho. “We were trying to be pretty cooperative in terms of showing that our business model was in the best interest of investors and also from policy perspective, showing we were here to try to create a more robust entrepreneurial ecosystem.”
To combat the risk of fraud, Crowdmatrix’s platform moves away from the traditional marketplace format where any company can post, and requires every company hoping to raise from Crowdmatrix to have a lead investor leading the round. Besides mitigating that risk of fraud, the requirement of having a lead investor also provides peace of mind to investors writing a smaller cheque that don’t have the time or right to do due diligence; they know an independent third party has already negotiated the terms and done that due diligence.
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The National Crowdfunding Association of Canada (NCFA Canada) is a cross-Canada non-profit actively engaged with both social and investment crowdfunding stakeholders across the country. NCFA Canada provides education, research, leadership, support and networking opportunities to over 1300+ members and works closely with industry, government, academia, community and eco-system partners and affiliates to create a strong and vibrant crowdfunding industry in Canada. Learn more at ncfacanada.org.
Progressa Shifts Lending Operations to Capitalize on Toronto Fintech Cluster
Progressa Release | July 29, 2016
Significant Growth Opportunity Targeted With GTA-Focused Model
VANCOUVER, BC--(Marketwired - July 29, 2016) - Progressa, Canada's fastest growing financial technology company focused on helping non-prime and near-prime Canadians, announced today a restructuring that moves the entire lending operations to the recently established Greater Toronto-area office. This decision was made based on the company's long term expansion goals combined with attractive initial feedback from the GTA market, as well as recognition of the large and highly skilled group of talent in the financial services industry.
Recently opened in June of this year, the Toronto based operations of Progressa has seen significant growth with 20 employees hired from over 1500 applications fielded from some of the brightest minds in finance and technology. With such encouraging initial results, the decision was made to move the lending operations closer to Canada's biggest financial centre, and into the same time zone as a large customer cohort, allowing for more efficient client service and increased hiring capacity. Progressa will also benefit from invaluable peer support from organizations such as MaRS located in the immediate vicinity of the new offices.
See: How will marketplace lending become a mainstream investment asset class?
"We are very encouraged with the growth of the Toronto operation and saw significant growth opportunity in moving our lending operations East," said Progressa CEO, Ali Pourdad. "There are some difficult decisions to be made in business and unfortunately we had to say goodbye to seventeen dedicated team members in the Vancouver office as we shifted our lending focus towards growth in Toronto. We are incredibly grateful for their contributions and loyalty to the company and are sad to see them go. We are doing everything we can to provide support to our former employees during this transition period."
Under the new structure, all lending operations will operate out of Toronto while management oversight and non-lending services remain in the original Vancouver office. This provides Progressa room in Vancouver to grow the equally vital data science, software development, and marketing teams while it continues to expand its loan origination exponentially.
About Progressa
Progressa is Canada's fastest growing financial technology company focused on helping non-prime and near-prime Canadians seeking to improve their financial health. Progressa serves over three million Canadians who have had their credit rating impacted by overdue bills and items that have gone to collections. With the help of advanced data science and analytics, Progressa effectively evaluates credit risk and provides loan opportunities where traditional institutions cannot.
Source: Progressa Release
The National Crowdfunding Association of Canada (NCFA Canada) is a cross-Canada non-profit actively engaged with both social and investment crowdfunding stakeholders across the country. NCFA Canada provides education, research, leadership, support and networking opportunities to over 1300+ members and works closely with industry, government, academia, community and eco-system partners and affiliates to create a strong and vibrant crowdfunding industry in Canada. Learn more at ncfacanada.org.
