Summary
This time last week, the crowdfunding world was abuzz about two projects surpassing $1 million raised: Elevation Dock and Double Fine Adventure. A mere week later, the investment crowdfunding community is in shock and mourning following ProFounder’s announcement that they are shutting down.
Description
The ProFounder story is less clear. ProFounder seemed to have several advantages in the investment crowdfunding space:
An experienced team. Co-Founders Jessica Jackley and Dana Mauriello both graduated from Stanford University Graduate School of Business. Jessica was Chief Marketing Officer and co-founder of wildly successful microfinance platform kiva.org.
They had a first mover advantage. On August 22, 2011, Wired reported ProFounder had raised “almost $500,000 from 304 investors for 18 companies” in their first six months. Six months later, most US-based investment crowdfunding platforms are still waiting to launch.
ProFounder had $1.3 million in seed capital, as reported by CrunchBase.
Thank you to Adam Frazer for posting this content. We hope the Crowdsourcing community can share their perspectives about the incredibly interesting last couple of weeks for the crowdfunding industry.
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Posted by Adam Frazer
Thank you to Adam Frazer for posting this content. We hope the Crowdsourcing community can share their perspectives about the incredibly interesting last couple of weeks for the crowdfunding industry.