By: Matthew Milner
Several weeks ago, I caught a game with some buddies at Yankee Stadium.
After buying tickets, some BBQ from Brother Jimmy’s, and a few rounds of Buds, we spent about $100 each.
The Yankees won and we had a blast.
Back in the office early the next morning, I reviewed a memo from one of our research analysts. He was excited about a potential early-stage investment.
Towards the end of the memo, something caught my eye. I was still a little bleary-eyed. I had to blink a few times to make sure I was seeing it right:
The minimum investment was just $100—same as I’d spent the night before.
But with this $100, I could make a fortune…
And so could you.
The Evolution of Early-Stage Investing
Before I explain more, let’s look at how early-stage investing used to work.
You see, until recently, setting up a new tech start-up was expensive.
Just buying all the servers, hardware, and software could cost $1 million.
Because start-ups needed so much capital, they had no choice but to approach big venture funds, or knock on the door of wealthy individual investors.
And the investment minimums were steep. On the first private deal I heard about in the mid-1990s, the minimum was $50,000.
But then things started to change...
Moore’s Law and The Open-Source Revolution
By 2005, the cost to get a start-up off the ground had dropped dramatically...
And by 2010, it had become downright cheap.
Instead of needing millions of dollars, a company could get started for just a few thousand.
For the most part, this change came about due to two factors:
Moore’s Law, and open-source technology.
Moore’s law states that computing power will double every year or so.
And for the past 50 years, not only has this law held true—but it’s led to massive decreases in the cost of hardware and servers.
But we’ve also experienced a massive change in software…
Instead of paying tens of thousands of dollar every month for computer code, start-ups today use “open source” code—software that’s built and maintained, for free, by a community of engineers.
For start-ups, these cost savings are revolutionary…
But as you’ll learn in a moment, they’re also revolutionary for investors like you.
The Rise of Crowdfunding
Now that start-ups can get off the ground with such little capital, companies have popped up to help them gather this capital.
For example, look at KickStarter.
KickStarter is what’s known as a “crowdfunding” site.
It enables many people to each contribute a small amount of money ($10 here, $20 there), and in return, they get a “reward,” whether it’s a free version of the product they helped fund, or a T-shirt.
The problem is, when one of these projects becomes a billion-dollar enterprise, the contributors don’t share in the success.
In fact, this very situation happened recently:
A company called Oculus VR raised money on KickStarter. In exchange for their donations, contributors received a free version of the Oculus product.
But two years later, Facebook came along and acquired Oculus for $2 billion—and these contributors didn’t get a dime.
Thankfully, a scenario like this won’t ever have to happen again...
Equity Crowdfunding
Last month—on May 16th, 2016—the U.S. Government passed a new set of laws called The JOBS Act.
These laws allow for a new type of crowdfunding. It’s called “equity crowdfunding.”
With equity crowdfunding, you can invest a small amount of money into a project—but now, instead of getting a T-shirt, you receive an actual ownership stake.
So if one of the companies you invest in turns into the next Oculus, you could walk away with hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars.
That’s Why We’re Here
After Wayne and I learned about this revolutionary new way to invest, we decided to launch Crowdability.
We suspected there would be huge demand for promising start-up deals—but we also suspected that investors would get taken advantage of.
So we made it our mission to help investors like you navigate this new market.
Simply put, we provide unbiased research and education on the equity crowdfunding market.
We sift through all of the available deals—and then point out the ones that could bring you the most profits.
That’s why, tomorrow night at 8pm EST, we’ll be hosting one of the most important presentations in our company’s history:
Not only will we show thousands of Crowdability readers how to invest as little as $100 into a promising new deal...
But we’ll show them how to invest like a professional venture capitalist by building a portfolio of 24 of these deals.
Hopefully, you already signed up for tomorrow’s live (online) event.
Again, it begins promptly at 8:00 PM Eastern.
I hope to see you there!
Happy Investing,
Matthew Milner Founder
Crowdability
|
|
|
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar