Seed Capital Using Crowdfunding: Korstiaan Zandvliet, CEO of Symbid, Amsterdam (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What are the core benefits that your community offers to the investors?

Korstiaan Zandvliet: There are several motivations for investors to invest, so the benefits differ accordingly. What the community offers to all investors is engagement and information/updates about the plan. The entrepreneur provides the latter by answering questions, sending out emails, or placing status updates about the progress of the idea. Other than that, part of the community is mainly involved with the idea and doesn’t participate much in discussions. Other investors enjoy posing questions or information in relation to the idea they came across or answering questions that are aimed at the entrepreneur in general if they know the answer. >>>

Seed Capital Using Crowdfunding: Korstiaan Zandvliet, CEO of Symbid, Amsterdam (Part 1)

Korstiaan Zandvliet holds an MSc in New Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship and has a background in sociology and business administration. He is a frequent writer of blog articles on social media, crowdsourcing and c. After holding a position as marketing manager for a Dutch software company (www.mendix.com), he co-founded a company called Symbid, which aims to help nascent entrepreneurs to overcome financing problems for their start-up or small business. Symbid focuses on entrepreneurial finance needs up to €2.5 million by using the concept of crowdfunding in a new way. In contrast to currently available crowdfunding sites, Symbid developed a financial and legal framework, which allows crowdfunders to actually become a shareholder of the offered crowdfunding propositions. For more information, visit www.symbid.com.

Sramana Mitra: Korstiaan, welcome to the blog. To start, would you tell us more about your offering is in the domain of crowdfunding to fund startup ventures? >>>

Pre-Seed Money via Crowdfunding: A Conversation with Rock The Post’s Alejandro Cremades

Today we are talking with Alejandro Cremades, the founder & CEO of Rock The Post, a crowdfunding platform for entrepreneurs and small businesses. Prior to Rock The Post, he worked as an attorney at King & Spalding in New York. During this time, he was involved in one of the biggest investment arbitration cases in history, Chevron v. Ecuador. He also provided advice on other complex international arbitration cases before the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) and under the UNCITRAL rules, as well as international commercial arbitration under ICC, AAA and SCC rules.

Cremades has a law degree from Universidad San Pablo-CEU (Spain) and a master’s in international business & trade law from Fordham Law School.

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How To Achieve Great Media Coverage For Your Incubator

By guest author Irina Patterson

Who doesn’t appreciate great PR? It leads to brand recognition and more business.

Let me use a case study to explain how simple it is with 1M/1M. One of our partners, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (IIT, KGP), held a custom roundtable with us in January 2012. >>>

Strong Entrepreneurs vs. Weak Entrepreneurs

By guest author Irina Patterson

Which kind of entrepreneur do you want to be?

Great entrepreneurs always find the time to study even when they are very busy. They find the time to fill the gaps in their knowledge of how to build a business.

Weak entrepreneurs keep doing the same thing over and over again. They repeat the same mistakes that thousands of others have made before them and in doing so put themselves out of business. >>>

How to Explain One Million by One Million (1M/1M)

By guest author Irina Patterson

One of our partners asked me for an overview of 1M/1M in a letter form. He wanted an easy way to explain 1M/1M to a government agency that he is part of. >>>

Entrepreneur: How Long Should You Work For FREE?

By guest author Irina Patterson

Have you seen this? Entrepreneurs labor for years on their ideas and can’t sell their products because they have no customers.

They essentially work for free, drawing on their savings or their family and friends’ support. >>>

Entrepreneur: Is Your Business Fundable?

By guest author Irina Patterson

Have you seen this? Entrepreneurs seek funding year after year, only to never get funded. Have you wondered why? It’s simple: Most likely, it is because their business is not fundable.

What does this mean? Some businesses will just never be venture fundable, no matter what their entrepreneurs do. The only way to build them is by alternative financing. >>>