NCFA Canada | Feb 8, 2019

Host: Manseeb Khan, NCFA, Fintech Fridays show host

Guest: DARYL HATTON, Founder and CEO, ConnectionPoint / FundRazr (linkedin)

BIO:  Daryl Hatton, CEO of award winning international crowdfunding company FundRazr and of the innovative sponsored crowdfunding company Sponsifi has founded multiple start-ups and helped bring one to a successful NASDAQ IPO in 1999. He actively serves as board member or advisor to handfuls of other hot companies in Canada. In addition, he is a Director and Crowdfunding Ambassador for the National Crowdfunding Association of Canada. As a social media guy and frequent public speaker, his Twitter tagline includes words like “#KingOfGastown, entrepreneur, cardiac survivor, foodie, whisky nut, philosopher, mentor, father and friend.”

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Transcription of Interview

Intro: Welcome fintech Friday's a weekly podcast brought to you by the National Crowdfunding and Fintech Association of Canada and partners.Covering all things fintech block chain be AI and alternative finance.

Manseeb Khan: Daryl thanks so much for sitting down with me today. I mean I'm super excited to jump right into it.

Daryl Hatton: Happy to be here. We're going to have some fun.

Manseeb Khan: Awesome. So, could you just for the audience give us a little bit of who you are and essentially who and what Connection Point?

Is sure  well I'm Daryl Hatton founder and CEO companies call connection point. We're best known for FundRazr which our  enterprise crowdfunding platform is. I'm a serial entrepreneur, startup company took a public on Nasdaq way back in nineteen ninety-nine and we had one of the fastest growing companies in the U.S. that year. Fast forward a bunch of years and I left that and said gee do I want to do business again. And I started Connection Point six months in the day after I left the other company. And along the way we started to do fundraising. We learned a whole lot about the market. And here we are.

Manseeb Khan: Awesome. So, what made you kind of switch. Like so why crowdfunding ? Like this was I'm assuming this is early 2000s, right? Like you said you were essentially one of the OG's entrepreneurs out here. Yeah. Why crowdfunding ?

Daryl Hatton: It was actually 2008 and one of the things that we were looking to do is like I want to start this new business but because I was under an intellectual property rights deal with my previous company actually couldn't think about it really. And being careful about it didn't want to think about it while I was with the other company. So, six months in a day I now get free and out and I said OK what can I do. And it took from about September of that year until January to really figure out that I wanted to get into the social funding space. And the reason I was doing it was I was coaching a lacrosse team and I was looking for ways to get paid and to raise money for my team. So, I collect some fees and take some donations because we had a 50/50 turnouts and all that kind of stuff. And I had a little epiphany. I was trying to also get the guys out to practice and I was sending out emails. Nobody was showing up, but I started a Facebook group and posted the date, time of practice and I had a 100 percent attendance. The first time I did that, and a light bulb went on and said Hey can I get them to pay their fee like that. And FundRazr was born. So, it really was all about trying to scratch my own itch and in the early days as we developed the idea of paying the fees really didn't take off very well. But the idea of collecting donations went nuts and that's what we built the company around.

Manseeb Khan: Awesome. So, could you still sticking on the early days I know on our call before we  even started the episode you compare like the early days of crowdfunding and how it's very parallel to now the early days of crypto and Block chain. Could you just go a little bit more detailed about that?

Daryl Hatton: Oh, for sure yeah. I mean when we started crowdfunding no one knew what to call it. And I even had the opportunity to buy crowdfunding dot.com as a domain name and was given some advice by a bunch of people in the industry going I never nobody ever wanted to call it that. Yeah right.  Oops. So, you know the interesting things that happened at that time, but we were really struggling in the beginning to try and talk about this intersection of social media and of finance technology and of marketing technology all into one platform that becomes a crowdfunding campaign. So, we used the word crowdfunding a whole lot. And if you went to the crowdfunding conferences everyone was talking crowdfunding and to the people who were not in the industry, they would come in they hear us and they're going. What the hell are you guys talking about. Like you're not making sense. All you're doing is dropping these buzzwords all the time and one of the things that I hear going on now at crypto conferences and block chain and the whole area of the new innovation and fintech around this is the same thing. There's a ton of terminology. Ask an entrepreneur what they do. And they'll have you know they'll talk about how they've got this unique twist on what they do with block chain to do Dut, Da Dut, Da. One of the lessons we learned from the crowdfunding world is can you explain what you do without ever using your buzzword. Can you explain the value of your business to somebody and have them get it? Why it's important. And why you're going to win without ever using the words. So, for any crowdfunding or any sorry crypto or block chain entrepreneur right now can you tell me why your business will be successful without ever using the words crypto or block chain or any of the terminology around it. What's the business value that you're delivering to the customer. And why is that really important. It may be a technical function that you're delivering but there's a business reason and they're not just a technology reason. And the companies that win are the ones that figure out how to communicate that business reason and build the technology to solve it. Big learning what we had over that time is just you know kind of buzzwords are cool and let make you feel like you're in the crowd but stop it. Start talking about your business and the value and the customers may see a little bit more boring. But it's got a way better higher chance of success.

Manseeb Khan: No, I absolutely agree with you. And I guess I mean like you took a misstep and you said crowdfunding. I think crowdfunding is still in that same conversation. Now you want to be able to kind of give the elevator pitch with like your industry jargon. Right. You want to be able to like to go to like roll up to any random person at Starbucks and kind of like hey this is actually my business does sound like a good idea right.

Daryl Hatton: Yeah. And you know it's easy to stumble into. I mean as I just did it you know it's a shortcut for us to try and take a set of concepts that we have in our head and communicate more easily to other people who also have similar concepts. And it’s just good practice to try and do it without that. Yeah. Absolutely. It's  kind of fun once you get into it because you get to laugh at yourself a lot. Keep taking a shortcut.

Manseeb Khan: Yeah. I can absolutely see that see that. So, you guys focus on an enterprise crowdfunding could you just explain a little bit like why is that different than the Kickstarter's and the Indigo's goes out there.

Daryl Hatton: Well yeah it might help to kind of hear the path we've got to with that. And so, let me give you a little bit of background. When we started our crowdfunding platform, we were all about personal funding. Helping people raise money because they had cancer, they had a tragedy, they had a car accident something happened in their lives and they needed emergency funds. And the best way to do that was to talk to the friends and family and get them to the money to help because those are the people, we're most invested in helping you. And it worked, it saved babies and it helped people recover from car accidents and then help people deal with medical bills especially in the United States and along the way. You know we one of the ways we had to communicate was to use Facebook to share and as we were doing that some non-profits came along, and they said you know we love this kind of toolset but it's kind of weird to use it as a person. So, could we use it under the name of our organization. So, we start. Or the name of our charity. So, we added features in to make it so that you could do a personal campaign or charitable campaign. And that ended up you know giving us a whole new set of requirements but a whole new set of customers. And then Kickstarter the time was doing a good job and Indiegogo was starting to do more in funding of entrepreneurial style projects or creative projects. And we ended up getting asked hey can we find our project with you because you guys seem to be really good at social sharing. So now we've got three constituent groups of customers personal, nonprofit and now entrepreneurial or creative and over the period of time as we built out all the features for all of those it started to become what we call an enterprise crowdfunding platform. And the reason for that is that we're solving a lot of the problems for those customers at a much more deep level about things like team` communications around running your crowdfunding campaign. Can you have a lot of people on your team both as managers. Which is pretty easy for most apps to think about but then also as things like promoters. Can you hire somebody on to the team whose job it is to go in and promote you to influencers in the industry and track the results and help figure out whether or not they're helping you raise money for your campaign. So, we call it an enterprise crowdfunding platform right now because the basics of what a crowdfunding campaign are have morphed into. In our case over 10 different ways to do campaigns and some of them are very charitable focused. Some of them are very personal focused and some of them are very much a business focus.

Manseeb Khan: I LOVE THAT! I kind of want you to tell the story that you told me over the phone of that father reaching out to you about as a little girl and like how the example that you use like some people create a business to create a business. Some people kind of fall into the business. Can you can you tell that story a little because I loved it so much.

Daryl Hatton: Yeah. You know one of the things people look at us with FundRazr and there is we've got the different brands we'll talk about this a little bit as well is that there's different ways to do crowdfunding. And when people look at our technology, they get confused by it. So, we actually give it different brand names to help separate the customers apart from each other. Funny enough. But the story that you're referring to when we first launched in it, we kind of have to do a relaunch of the platform in July of 2010 after surviving a near-death experience with Facebook kicking the chair out from underneath us and we'll talk about that maybe too. But basically. So, when we started the campaign and we're focused on these personal donations and my goal in starting this was to build a business. I wasn't trying to go save the world. I wasn't trying to raise money for charitable causes and that was because it was a good thing to do for the planet. I was trying to build a business and we were really struggling. Trying to help ourselves understand why customers were using this and what they were really trying to do. And it feels now like we were just so totally naive about what was going on. But so, we launched in July of 2010 and we're going along we're watching this incredible growth happening. All these people are using these campaigns and we're really focused on how we help them raise more money but not really thinking about why they're raising more money. And then we got a Christmas card, the Christmas card was from a family that had been living off the grid in Hawaii. I think there was maybe people living on the beach kind of thing. He got out of the U.S. military they'd hooked up as a couple they'd had a little girl and you know so they didn't have. They were kind of dropped out a little bit to the system. I think they didn't have health insurance that kind of thing. And they discovered that their little girl had been diagnosed with childhood leukemia. So, in the race to try and figure out how to save her again no health insurance in the US there for that. They found out that the military hospital in San Diego would take her because he'd been in the military, but they had to get the girl there A.S.A.P. because childhood leukemia is a very fast-moving disease. So, they put up a campaign or a FundRazr and they raised that I think it was thirty-five hundred dollars. They needed to get the flights. Like you know right now and given the low accommodation when they hit San Diego and they took a couple of days and they got her there and when they got her there the doctor said if you hadn't got her here today or tomorrow, she probably would have died. And so, they sent us a thank you card saying thanks for helping save our daughter's life. We didn't I mean that just smacked us hard. We had no idea that really that was kind of an end result if you will. The business value of what we delivered wasn't raising money. It was helping save somebody's life or helping save a puppy dog or helping someone recover from an accident. Those are the things the real value we're delivering it wasn't collecting money in a social environment. And so that epiphany just really changed how we looked at the business. And you know we still are a profit-making business, really low on the profit side because we're trying to scale it and it's a harder market than people might think. But it is you know there is that nice benefit that we actually have this big business value. That's a very personal value in a very charitable value in the background and that's a fantastic way to come to work every morning and think about what you do for the day is you help people save probably dogs and little girls.

Manseeb Khan: Yeah, I mean that's probably the best customer testimonial I've probably ever heard possibly ever if not in a very long time. You did briefly before you jumped in the store you talked about how you broke down your business in to different kind of brands could you talk a little bit more about that and how that ties it to you guys scaling because like you said you guys are not as quote unquote profitable because you're trying to scale. Could you talk a little bit more of the challenges scaling and being a crowdfunding service?

Daryl Hatton: Started connection point and we knew that. I don't know. I just had this hunch that the technology that we were going to build would have more than one use case in the marketplace because really,  it's a marketing system. And so what kind of problem are you trying to solve with it as a marketing system was a personal? Was it corporate? Was it charitable? So we started a FundRazr with the idea that it was the general-purpose platform for crowdfunding using a donations or a rewards type model. So, donations model being your traditional charitable thing. GoFundMe is a good example of that. The rewards model is the Kickstarter or Indiegogo model where you're doing an all or nothing campaign and you're giving the donor some reward back. So that was really it took the majority of our focus and energy and as a result we tended to lump more customers into that pile than we may should have because you know it was just more convenient just as kind of keep them focused on the one brand for a while. But over the last couple of years we've really noticed that a couple of different use cases are showing up that are worth separating them out from the main stream. So, it's all the same technology with a different skin on it and sometimes a little bit of a tweak to the feature set an example that is one of our brands we call CoCoPay. CoCoPay stands for collaborative community payments and it's designed to be used by businesses to allow or enable their customers to use crowdfunding to help them finance the purchase of the product or service. That's a big one mouthful but if you imagine I don't know if you remember. I don't know if we had this chat but there's the company in the States called in Enchroma and they do glasses that you can put on and if you're colorblind it'll help show you colors for about 80 percent of the people who are colorblind that put them on. It's really emotional to not have seen color. And now to see it. I mean this world is full of color, but the glasses are you know mildly expensive there between if you do it right, you're probably going to get two pairs of them they're going to be between five hundred  to one thousand dollars and some people can't afford that. So if you go to the Enchroma web site there's a spot on their site where you can use our technology to start a crowdfunding campaign that will with a  Enchroma branding tell the story using  Enchroma glasses and help you communicate that to your friends and family and co-workers and others in your social network and help you buy the glasses. Now it might be for you but one of the most common use cases is to buy them as a gift for somebody else. So, a classroom we'll get together buy them for their teacher and then or someone will buy them for a military vet they had that happen. Not quite sure how they got there with colored blind, but they did. So that was really cool. And then you know they'll buy them for Grandpa because Grandpa has never had it always took care of the kids, got them go to college, got the grandkids going  never really took the time to figure it out for himself or was it didn't have anything available. So, the family gets together buys Grandpa glasses that let him see color for the first time and the incredible folks tell you how to do it right to capture your YouTube moment. They say take a whole bunch of colorful balloons and take him outside somewhere and don't tell him what it's all about it just ask them to put all these cool looking sunglasses and they look cool stylish glasses and usually what happens is the glasses go on the glasses come off. The glasses go on glasses come off and whoever it is crying. And they because you know it's that it's a super emotionally, I get it and there's some guys that have just gone off on the oh god, Oh my God they're so funny. But the point is that by allowing the community to work together to buy something it may not seem like it's big a use case. But if you get into a lot of medical devices that are maybe ten thousand dollars because you need special Walker you need something that gives someone mobility. They may not be able to afford it right away but their friends and their family and their social networks would go let's fix that for them. Their good person we'll fix that for them and CoCoPay lets them you know safely raise the money and pay it to the company as opposed to paying it into the individual so that you don't have to worry about fraud and it's all or nothing so that if you don't raise enough money nobody's out you know you don't get halfway towards buying one of these things and now what do you do with all the money and refund it to everybody and take a few gets the payment companies you know you're kind of in a net loss for trying to do something good. So, it takes all the best of the crowdfunding technologies of all or nothing social sharing teamwork collaboration in our case you know branding of the company and puts it all together in a package that somebody can use to crowd finance a purchase. Is some idea of where it's the same technology? But if we're going to sell it to a company, they don't want to come to our Web site and see that we're raising, we're saving puppy dogs and little girls they're going how does this affect our business. Why am I doing that? And so, there's a dedicated site to CoCoPay to talk about its business value. But ninety-nine-point eight percent of the technology is the same as FundRazr.

Manseeb Khan: Mm hmm. I mean this does bleed into I guess my next question of corporate good right and how you're seeing. You've mentioned that in the phone call we have that how corporations are now not for the sake of oh hey we're going to go and plant trees just for the sake of planting trees. Now we're going to go and pick an issue that our customers or clients are very passionate about and then try to spearhead it and like the best example I can think of would be when Adidas and Nike decided to take all like ocean pollution plastic and remake it into sneakers because ocean pollution was something that both companies audiences were very passionate about. So, they created a sneaker behind it and that started this whole renewable shoe movement. Right. So why is or how is corporate got like corporate good better or better than the government initiatives that are going on or the charity initiatives or it is, or should we see it as more as like a tag on.

Daryl Hatton: One of the things I didn't say in the beginning. If you actually look at mission of what we have with Connection Point we're trying to well, we are We're reimagining philanthropy. And one of the reasons that we want to do that is that the hypothesis is that we can get causes, corporations and consumers to all work together to solve world funding problems because that everyone can have a win in that and the collective group of all of them also gets a win. So, for example you know you said it very well that consumers are now wanting to have their companies do more than just supply them the product. You know in the case  of the shoe companies they saw an opportunity to not only sell shoes but to solve an environmental problem at the same time. And they knew through research that their consumers would really like that. That's got a kind of a social impact space. You talk about multiple bottom lines you know the bottom line I get a great pair of shoes from a brand that I love the story behind the shoes is fascinating and fantastic. You know these used to be junk in the ocean and they've turned it into look at these things these are amazing. And that at the same time that's reducing pollution in the ocean. So, the consumer there is driving that behavior because they are demanding more from their partners and the partners are interested in doing this because it builds loyalty with their customers. Their ability to go in and use the best things of what corporations can do which is communication at massive scale and the ability to actually execute on programs to change social problems and in some cases though they need to have something like a charity partner actually do some of that work for them especially when it gets into softer skills. So if you've got a company that's not about saving plastic but maybe helping with mental health or maybe helping with child poverty or food distribution or food  safety quality for lower income families all sorts of things like that the corporation might want a partner with a charity for the charity deliver the work in the field but then be able to use the fact that they're supporting that charity as a story for their consumers saying hey you know we all care about this together. Why don't you buy our products? We work with this company and there's a trading of value that goes on in that system where they get money to the charity to do the work the consumer feels great because they know this charity is doing the work. And they may end up establishing a better relationship with the charity and they're more loyal to the company for buying that product. So, it I think it's one of the changes we're going to see in society in the next few years. Is this is going to become the standard way to do it. Because it takes advantage of the strengths of all three parties and we built a product around that that we call Sponsifi and Sponsifi designed to do the place where the company can even make an offer of to the donors or the contributors on how they might want to further support the cause. So again, getting that branding out there that says we're supporting this cause and helping the company get better value for the money that they can spend on it and a more measure of resolve. So that was a lot of words in there, but you know if you can take out the idea that basically cost corporation consumers are going to work together because they already are. We just want to make it easier to do and less expensive for the companies particularly. And I think we're going to see something else transform society.

Manseeb Khan: Yes. No absolutely that's kind of what crowdfunding is what one of the missions of crowdfunding is  to make the world make it a better place right. If it's be that you're saving a little girl or you're saving a little puppy or cleaning the oceans right like though the of the whole part is especially with I mean millennials like me. We love to see that like corporations’ charities governments are taking more of an initiative to actually go after these social causes because these social causes are so near and dear to our heart. And now that companies are kind of using that  maybe some  could be as a marketing ploy some could because they actually truly believe in the said cause it's. Yeah. Crowdfunding. It's going to be very exciting in the years to come. So, with that what is the future of crowdfunding look like. And essentially what are you excited about in the space right. Are you excited that maybe in the future you might have like this block chain integration? I excited that you can start tokenization a lot of donations?

Daryl Hatton: There's lots in there. Let's just before we go there let's think about one thing around. You know I talked a lot about causes and what's going on there and a lot of entrepreneurs that might be listening to this are going here. But what has that applied to me. I don't know I'm just trying to startup and I want to get this product out there and I'm having trouble with funding it. So, one of the benefits of crowdfunding in here is also the fact that because it enables communities to work together to solve a funding problem that's basically the bottom line and what it does. Let's not worry about whether it's charitable or corporate or whatever but if we all can work together and help us work together on that. One of the side effect benefits of this is that businesses that need not have been able to start before because of lack of capital can take a community of interested customers/prospects and we'll be customers and use the model to help them preorder enough product that they can go through the R&D phase the initial production run and get the product into the hands of consumers who really want it. That's a social benefit because now we have a company that was created out of thin air literally and it's providing income and it's providing satisfaction to consumers and it's providing opportunity for people that live out some of their dreams and maybe change the world because they've got a better widget in some form. It's more efficient it's more friendly it's easier to use, it goes faster whatever the real benefit in there is those things are helping our society as well. And a lot of the entrepreneurs that are starting up campaigns right now are small companies are realizing that they have to have that kind of social responsibility aspect baked into their company for two reasons one to attract their customers. And I think this is actually way more important doesn't get enough press to attract their employees. If you want to work for nameless soulless company, you know big office tower why I am here every day. This sucks you know I don't enjoy my work I don't really feel like I'm making an impact or by the way we work for the company we're really clear the part of what we do is to help with this social problem or you know 10 percent of the proceeds of the profits from our company go to support the producers families who are helping us build this neat new eco backpack you know I don't know make up a story there but basically that feeling of going to work and having purpose which we discovered by accident is one of the key motivators for digital natives, millennials and gen Z to want to go to work and they will work really a ton of harder and put more of their life into their work when they feel like that work has got an impact on the planet. So, you can use crowdfunding as a way to help fund the idea. And for all entrepreneurs that are looking to start up a business there. It's a great way to get revenue into your company without having to give up ownership you know equity and securities. Crowdfunding is great but you are giving up. It's the most expensive money you'll ever get because it costs you a big chunk of your company in the future. But sometimes that's all you can do. So, you do it. But if you can fund it with some of these others and have that social tie in you can not only launch your product but build a company where people want to work and where you can have some real satisfaction to work home at the end of the day. So, I think there's a lot in there and that's one of the things I'm very excited about. You know that's part of future is now because it's just not evenly distributed. Well who is it. Who said that the future is has arrived it's not just evenly spread out? We can do that now and then to answer your question about some of the other technology you know what I think of crypto and block chain and much of that industry about is how we make things more transparent and make it easy for us to see kind of our thread that ties through the financial story of the organization.  So, in the charitable world we look at this and say if you made a contribution to a cause to build wells in Africa. Which well in Africa did my money go to build in crypto being mechanism for kind of tracking where the value is with block chain being where did it deploy. What's the ledger of it seems like it's going to be a very interesting topic because when people make a donation they really want to know what good they did? And I can see some technology in there helping make that happen at the moment it's a bit of a geeky love because consumers aren't necessarily demanding that level of transparency, but it could be really cool once we have it because then they might start demanding it more once they know they can get it. So, I think there's lots of things will happen in our financial world because of this distributed ledger capability.

Manseeb Khan: And I think you'd like to harp on more of the transparency aspect. At some point I think people would be pretty excited to see that like oh hey I like that little girl that I donated 30 bucks to. You can kind of track it like how you track like your orders on Amazon right. At some point we'll probably get to like that level of transparency. really. Oh cool. They actually hit this goal or the next milestones that's like that's something to kind of look forward to and it's like it's maybe not gamifying it but like it's you know it just like fueling the fire of  doing good.

Daryl Hatton:  Your right on with that we actually do that now in FundRazr. We have a concept called micro project and we've been leading the industry and trying to talk about this transition from don't fund. I'll give me a really concrete example of this.

Manseeb Khan: No please do!

Manseeb Khan: There's a cause called One Girl Can that helps girls in Eastern Africa get an education because the founders of this cause were very successful in business and  the couple he continued to run the business and she decided to run her foundation on the side of it and the foundation was about helping these girls get an education because they knew that the change in the quality of the life for them and even more so for the members of their community was so huge. So, what they were doing is they're building schools in Eastern Africa. And last year we said to them you know that's a major project to build the school. What if we broke it down into a whole series of micro projects? Let's talk about each of the girls that needs to go through these schools and what would be their life like if they were able to go. What are their hopes and dreams and aspirations and let's get people to fund them individually because in aggregate you're going to get enough money to do your funding for the school? And so, we call that micro projects dividing a major project down into the hundreds or thousands of small little projects and our technology is designed to make that really efficient. But now the interesting thing the stories that can come out of this imagine that you know you sign up to help  Purdy one of the girls and she wants to be an engineer because we know that you signed up to fund just Purdy. We can send you updates on what's happening with just Purdy and her journey going through school. So, giving you that same kind of ongoing view into your social investment different you know you put in money but if you're looking for a social payback and not a financial payback. Letting you track Purdy progress we said our you know dream story here is that Purdy adds to her campaign because she's an adult she can do that a young adult but she gets out to her story saying guys I'm really nervous I'm going in for my final here. I really appreciate all the support you've given me to get to this point. M.M. You have an audience in North America around the world waited with bated breath and a little while later you get a thing going. I passed and happiness is going over North America. Because together they made a difference right. Yeah. So, it's that we're doing it now without having to have that level of transparency in the block chain you know to do that but maybe block chain help make it a little bit more precise a little more guaranteed.  That you know what really happened. Somebody just didn't read a verdict. You know the janitor there you want to know that you actually get the good work. Yeah. It brings up other stuff like how do we find overhead? But that a different problem to solve.

Manseeb Khan:  I love the fact that how. Like your example really solidifies the. It takes a village to raise a child. You're going to like hopefully in the future you're going to see like actual like villages or like  digital villages helping raise children like in Africa or like Syria or when they have you only got like following that story it's kind of like its kind of like a vlog.

Daryl Hatton: So, it's well you know I think one of the other projects we're looking at is to fund portable solar powered charging stations in for villages in Africa. And would people be willing to donate to help make that happen if they can hear the stories of the villagers lives that have been transformed. Because when they have power they can study. The kids in the village and study at night without having to burn kerosene in their homes which is so hard on their health and is expensive. So, if they could end up having light that will let them on their laptop or their phone or their board the tablet, they're starting to get some technology but they don't even have power yet. Giving them a way to have power, would consumers around the world be willing to support some of that and in you know in exchange for the stories that are going to come out of that village and the impact it's going to create. And if you take a kind of an interesting view of philanthropy as a form of entertainment it's a discretionary spend like it's we just choose to spend it. But some people are willing to spend small amounts of money to see that that result happen more than wanting to go to a movie or wanted to go up for you know a lot of people say hey I'll give up a cup of coffee discretionary spend element  every day for a month just to make sure Purdy gets through example right. That's philanthropy as entertainment. And I think that's one area we're heading to as well.

Manseeb Khan: I love it. Philanthropy is entertainment. I can.

Daryl Hatton: We're reimagining philanthropy. We've got to do that. You know you have basically all of this it is brain chemicals where you're buying endorphins and oxytocin when you make a contribution. That's how warm lovely feeling you get when you feel like you've helped somebody is oxytocin. It's the brain hormone and funnily enough it you know if you give lots of little gifts you get way more of it than if you give one big gift. So, in some ways I mean we're brain drug pushers. We're trying to get you hooked on philanthropy and crowdfunding is your gateway drug. So just be careful.

Manseeb Khan: I'm definitely using on the podcast description of crowdfunding is your gateway drug to philanthropy.

Daryl Hatton: Philanthropy is entertainment. God this story is writing itself right.

Manseeb Khan: Oh yeah. It really is. It really it really is. So too.

Manseeb Khan: I mean hey do you have any additional things you want to throw in like any anything that the audience should be aware of either. Things that you guys are doing at your company or thing other things that are going on in the crowdfunding space.

Daryl Hatton: I think one of the things that I would love more entrepreneurs to know in this is that if we're in the crowdfunding world together you know I talked a lot about how it takes community and I think first startup community in especially in FinTech space and others it is really important for us to think about how we help each other as opposed to how we're just always in competitive mode or selfish mode because it's amazing the amount of help that we've had on the way and the amount of help that now I can help muster for other startup companies. I'm currently advising 20 different startups and you know I've got a nice network that I've built up over the years that they can count on to help them. This working together thing which we learn through doing our crowdfunding business is one of the keys to actually making your business successful. And I really encourage a lot of the entrepreneurs to think about that that when they're thinking about how they ask for help. Also ask how they can help, and it changes the conversation dramatically. And you know you get much better results much faster.

Manseeb Khan: So, to wrap this up will be the best way for the audience to either contact you personally and or Connection Point. Do we snap you? Do we tweet you? do we e-mail you? Smoke signal? What we'll be the best way to contact you guys?

Daryl Hatton: Best way to hit me find me on LinkedIn. Daryl Hatton mention the show or else I might ignore you because so many sales guy is trying to hit me up that way and you can FundRazr.com.

Manseeb Khan: Awesome Darryl. Thank you so much for sitting down today. I mean and thank you for opening our minds to crowdfunding and making the world a much better place.

Daryl Hatton: Thanks for having me talk soon.

Outro : you've been listening to fintech Fridays brought to you by NCFA and partners. Tune in weekly for the latest fintech Friday podcast by subscribing to this channel. The National crowdfunding and FinTech Association of Canada is a non-profit actively engaged with social and investment fintech sectors around the globe and provide education research industry stewardship services and networking opportunities to thousands of members and subscribers. For more information please visit and see if a Canada dot org. Oh yea.

End of Podcast

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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org

Regulating financial innovation – going behind the scenes

September 13, 2019

FCA | Sep 11, 2019 Speech by Christopher Woolard, Executive Director of Strategy and Competition at the FCA, delivered at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance annual conference, Judge Business School. Highlights: The UK has led the rest of the world with developments like the regulatory Sandbox, we are very proud of what has been achieved through it. Early engagement is incredibly valuable for monitoring, supervisory and policy purposes. Working with innovative firms helps us achieve a better bird’s-eye view, enhancing our understanding when the overall landscape is blurry and ­changing quickly. 'Stablecoin' is a term that has been widely adopted by industry, but we do not take it to be a distinct category of cryptoassets. Something labelled as a 'stablecoin' could sit within or outside of our regulatory perimeter. Note: this is the speech as drafted and may differ from the delivered version. See:  FCA confirms new rules for P2P platforms Last month, Facebook announced its plans for Libra, the stablecoin it is planning to launch in conjunction with a number of payment and tech firms. As has been widely reported, along with other regulators and central banks, we have been discussing their plans with Facebook. If this comes ...
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Fintech Fridays EP37: Funding is Female with Jill Earthy

September 13, 2019

NCFA Canada | Sep 13, 2019 JOIN US ON A STORYTELLING JOURNEY EVERY FRIDAY. Sep 13: Funding is Female with Jill Earthy EP37 GUEST: JILL EARTHY, Head of Female Funders (Linkedin) HOST: Manseeb Khan, Fintech Friday's show host BIO:  Jill Earthy is an entrepreneurially minded leader who believes diversity drives innovation. As Head of Female Funders (powered by Highine BETA), she is empowering female leaders to become investors in early stage companies. Her background includes being an entrepreneur, supporting entrepreneurs in various leadership roles and working as Chief Growth Officer of FrontFundr, an online investment platform. She is a community leader and active mentor, currently serving on the national Board of Sustainable Development Technology Canada and as Board Chair of the Women’s Enterprise Centre in BC, and as Co-Chair of We for She. Jill was recently recognized by the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion award as a Community Champion, by Business in Vancouver as an Influential Woman in Business and by WXN as one the Top 100 most powerful women in Canada in 2019. About this episode:  On this episode of NCFA'S Fintech Fridays Podcast, our host Manseeb Khan sits down with Jill Earthy the Head of Female Funders. The talk about what ...
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Max Levchin’s Affirm seeks capital amid surge in fintech funding

September 13, 2019

TechCrunch | Kate Clark | Sep 12, 2019 Affirm, founded by PayPal’s Max Levchin, is said to be raising as much as $1.5 billion in a combination of debt and equity, according to people with knowledge of the company’s fundraising activities. Josh Kushner’s New York venture capital firm Thrive Capital is said to be leading the financing, with participation from the San Francisco outfit Spark Capital. Affirm declined to comment. Representatives of Thrive and Spark, existing Affirm investors, have not responded to a request for comment. Sources familiar with Affirm, which gives consumers an alternative to personal loans and credit by financing online purchases at point-of-sale, presume the round will be made up largely of a line of credit from a large financial institution, known as a warehouse facility. Affirm recently raised a $300 million Thrive-led Series F round in April at a valuation of $3 billion. Fintech companies focused on payments and lending, however, require a vast amount of capital to sustain operations. Those capital requirements coupled with the frothiness of the venture capital market justify this additional cash infusion. To date, Affirm has raised $1.03 billion in funding from Ribbit Capital, Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed ...
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Libra: France opposes the development of Facebook’s currency “on European soil”

September 12, 2019

Le Monde with AFP | Sep 12, 2019 Bruno Le Maire expressed his hostility towards this cryptocurrency project, saying that "the monetary sovereignty of states is at stake" Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire announced on Thursday (September 12th) that France was refusing to authorize the development "on European soil" of libra, the cryptocurrency that Facebook wants to launch in 2020. "Considerable financial disorder" "The monetary sovereignty of states is at stake," said the minister at the opening of a conference of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) dedicated to the challenges of cryptocurrencies - without specifying, however, what concrete measures he wanted engage to prevent the spread of libra in Europe. See:  Facebook’s Libra Cryptocurrency: Everything We Know In his speech, Bruno Lemaire described as "systemic" the risks that could result from this "possible privatization of a currency (...) held by a single actor that has more than 2 billion users on the planet" . "Any failure in the functioning of this currency, in the management of its reserves, could create considerable financial disorders , " justified the Mayor, also fearing that the libra is replacing the national currency in the States where the currency is weak or ...
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Regular investors are cut out of a major financial market and the SEC chief wants to change that

September 12, 2019

CNBC | Bob Pisani | Sep 10, 2019 Key Points The head of the SEC says more needs to be done to make it easier for companies to go public. Jay Clayton says his office is taking a “fresh look” at allowing Main Street investors access to the private capital markets. The head of the SEC says more needs to be done to make it easier for companies to go public and that his office is taking a “fresh look” at allowing Main Street investors access to the private capital markets. In a speech to the Economic Club of New York on Monday, SEC Chairman Jay Clayton said the lack of more IPOs and the inability of most of the Main Street investing public to access private markets was a “growing concern.” Clayton addressed what he called the “two segments” in capital markets: the public markets, and private ones, including private equity and venture capital investments. See:  The Solution To The Fintech IPO Shortage “Twenty-five years ago, the public markets dominated the private markets in virtually every measure,” he said. “Today, in many measures, the private markets outpace the public markets, including in aggregate size.” Clayton wants to make the ...
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Powering local regeneration through crowdfunded investment

September 12, 2019

Nesta UK | Rosalyn Old and Johnathan Bone | Sep 4, 2019 Earlier in May 2019, Nesta commissioned a report called 'Taking Ownership:  Community Empowerment through Crowdfund Investments' that looked at how community-led projects have the power to transform local areas socially, economically and environmentally and how institutions such as local governments, municipal authorities and foundations, can help community-led initiatives by making the most of new investment crowdfunding models (eg community shares and bonds). Key Findings Investment crowdfunding has been used to fund a broad range of local assets, including but not limited to, saving local shops and pubs from closure, creating new community centres and art spaces, and expanding leisure facilities and infrastructure projects. Potential opportunities in using investment crowdfunding for community-led initiatives include helping to fund projects that would otherwise struggle to access finance elsewhere, increasing the use of and volunteering for community initiatives, and strengthening local resilience and self-determination by bringing communities together to improve their area. The main challenges for community organisations raising money in this way include gaining access to assets to buy or use on a temporary basis, transitioning from grassroots fundraising to implementing a project and avoiding negative impacts on diversity and inclusion ...
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Lending Loop Surpasses $50 million Milestone and helps thousands of Canadian Businesses and Investors

September 11, 2019

NCFA Canada on behalf of our partner's Lending Loop | Sep 11, 2019 HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A CHESHIRE CAT SMILE? Well they deserve it. Back in October 2015, NCFA made this introductory video with Cato Pastoll, CEO and Co-Founder of Lending Loop, about a peer to peer lending marketplace for small businesses model that was new to Canada but was achieving significant growth internationally. The question and opportunity was back then:  why not here in Canada? A question that many of us ask ourselves, ask the community and point fingers at strict regulations and high operating costs.  Well fast forward several years and growth obstacles later, and the Lending Loop story continues to impress with their latest milestone of lending over $50 million to deserving small businesses to help them grow and expand operations while providing retail and accredited investors direct access to a wide range of lending and investment options, a robust community and the chance to strengthen Canadian small business - here here! The early vision... Brandon Vlaar, Co-founder and CTO of Lending Loop sharing their good news! CONGRATS to the entire Lending Loop Team for achieving this latest milestone.  We've 'got your back' and look forward ...
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What’s The Current BTC to XRP Rate?

September 11, 2019

NCFA Guest Post | Sep 9, 2019 The world was shook when online money was first introduced. Some people didn’t like the idea. They’d prefer having something tangible, something that they can actually see and touch to use as currency. Some people were positive about the new experience. They believe that it can certainly make life more convenient. But hey, we’re now in 2019 and online currency is still widely in use. In fact, its uses have expanded way more since it was first introduced (read more). One of the most popular and controversial of its time was BTC or Bitcoin. Even without studying cryptocurrencies, you’ve probably heard this term once or twice before. You may have come across it in the internet or someone may have encouraged you to try trading it. After all, when cryptocurrency was first brought to light, many people saw its potential in the trading market. And it has been making noise ever since. See:  New Regulatory Framework for Canadian Retail Payments Coming in 2019 At first, Bitcoin was surrounded with a lot of controversy – and of course, a lot of doubt. People were scared of exchanging real world money for something that you ...
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[Sept 2019 Roadshow]: Holt Accelerator’s Hot New Cohort is Coming to Vancouver, Waterloo, Toronto, Montreal!

September 11, 2019

Holt Accelerator | Samah El Falah | Sep 11, 2019 Holt Deal Day event series are seeking senior representatives of financial institutions, or fintech investors and experts to attend Holt’s Deal Day, taking place at Vancouver (Sept. 20th), Toronto (Sept. 23rd), Waterloo (Sept. 27th), Montreal (October, 2nd). Don’t miss out on the opportunity to interact with eight up & coming Fintech stars who will surely make a difference in Canada and beyond. As an investor, corporate or expert interested in Fintech, our Deal Days offer you an insider’s view of the upcoming trends and current challenges the industry is facing. What do the Deal Days consist of? Coffee / Registration (30 minutes) Canada Fintech Presentation by Holt (15 minutes)  Presentation on the current Fintech Ecosystem. The challenges & insights we gathered about 3 core fintech areas: Cybersecurity/Data Protection, Wealth Management (including Digital Assets), & Lending. 10 table mini-breakout session (30 minutes) Detailed roundtable discussions surrounding one of the topics covered during the Holt presentation. Speed-Dating (2 hours and 30 minutes) You will have the opportunity to see the 2019 cohort pitch after being part of the Accelerator program for a month. Just like our Selection Days, each pitch will end ...
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‘Bad things could happen’: Turning to tech to tame the crypto jungle

September 11, 2019

Reuters | Tom Wilson | Sep 11, 2019 LONDON (Reuters) - “Hi guys, could you please show me a firm bid for 100 bitcoin?” a seller texts on Skype. Joel Fruhman, right, and Dan Fruhman, directors of BCB Group pose for a photograph in London, Britain August 29 2019. REUTERS/Simon Dawson “One sec. $10270.” Two minutes later: “Sorry guys, that was an old order from Friday when skype wasn’t working.” “I really think we should get off skype. Bad things could happen. Someone is going to make an expensive mistake.” See:  New money-laundering rules change everything for cryptocurrency exchanges A messaging exchange over a potential $1 million deal, between a European asset manager looking to sell bitcoin and broker Joel Fruhman, illustrates the casual and often chaotic nature of cryptocurrency dealmaking. Trades involving hundreds of thousands, or millions, of dollars are routinely struck via brief chats on apps like Skype, WhatsApp, WeChat or Zoom, often with scant certainty over the identities of participants or the legal basis of agreements. “We’d end up in a Zoom call with about five ‘introducers’ - we didn’t really know who any of them were,” said Fruhman, a physicist by training who started a cryptocurrency ...
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