Global online crowd-funding platform and venture community Grow VC has tweaked its micro investment membership model, as well as developed and implemented a whole new set of tools to empower startup companies, making investing in startups transparent and effective.
The site, which has grown to over 9,000 entrepreneurs, investors and experts from 200 different countries, now provides access to the service for free, and allows users to efficiently make micro investments in startups (and startups to raise capital from these micro investments with the setting of milestones).
“Since we launched the platform in 2010, we have been listening to our community for the right time to move to the next level. With our new model, we open our service and startup funding opportunities to a larger audience. Users can now use the service for free and gain easier access to the community of entrepreneurs and investors,” says Grow VC‘s chairman and co-founder Jouko Ahvenainen.
“We believe this will create a healthy dynamic, as startups will be incentivized to look for the appropriate amount of capital that they need to get to the next level, all the while being validated by the crowd,” he adds.
The company is also looking at reaching out to non-traditional startup investors as another way to diversify their investment portfolios. “We believe that startup investing should be democratized and more people should have access to supporting early stage ventures,” states Grow VC CEO and co-founder Valto Loikkanen. “By including the crowd in the early stages of startup funding, the entire process can be simplified and
made more effective. For non-professional investors, this also creates an easy way to be part of a startups journey, something that until now has not been possible.”
“In the age of online democracy, the future of startup funding should involve more individuals, rather than being available to only a select few,” Loikkanen points out.
Grow VC recently successfully closed its first round of external investments in the company, and is looking to continue building their global operations in North America, Europe, China and India, as well as newer markets like South America and Africa.
