Seedrs, a British crowdsourcing platform which offers equity instead of perks to investors, claims to be the first platform of its kind to operate across Europe.
Seedrs officially began its UK operations in July 2012, and announced on Monday, that it now has more than 25,000 registered investors, and that it has successfully funded 48 early-stage deals to date. With the platform working its way around Europe, it also took on a range of rivals such as Seedmatch, in Germany.
The firm is unusual in its business approach that it in fact, holds the shares in the startups crowdfunded through its platform, on behalf of investors as nominees. But the great thing about making the platform available across Europe, is that the funding limit is better in scale due to different laws in some European countries.
According to a GigaOM interview, Seedrs CEO Jeff Lynn said that, "A platform like ours is a network effects-driven platform. The more investors we have, the more value we create for entrepreneurs. The more deal flow we have, the more value we create for investors. National borders are kind of arbitrary when it comes to investing and startups - offline, people tended to invest close to home, but on the internet why would you limit it to just one country?"
They have also announced plans to raise USD 810,000 for itself, using itself, by offering an 8.81% equity stake.
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