CAVU, a social learning platform from local startup Sigao Studios, has launched a crowdfunding campaign on the private investing platform Republic.
Crowdfunding investing is made possible by regulation crowdfunding — an exemption from securities laws that allows private companies to raise funds from the public. Private platforms screen companies before accepting them and allow individuals with lower net worths to invest and get a stake in those companies.
CAVU was unanimously accepted into the Republic program, which is a platform with a less than 5% acceptance rate and an intensive screening process. It has been used to fund companies such as Robinhood, SpaceX and Carta.
Sigao Studios’ new sister company is described by CEO Chris Sims as an “Airbnb for adult education.”
“We take people who want to teach, connect them with people who want to learn, and we validate and make the entire process easy to use,” Sims said. “More importantly, we implement some very strict training approaches and kind of ways to teach humans to make sure that they have the right kind of outcomes.”
CAVU is an acronym for a flight term: Ceiling and Visibility Unlimited. Its creation was inspired by a professional development industry that Sims described as fundamentally broken, ineffective and unaffordable for small companies and startups. It aims to make high-quality training more effective and inexpensive. It caters to both large enterprises and individual learners looking to refine their skills.
At press time, the company had more than $20,500 committed on Republic with a $150 minimum investment and a funding goal of $25,000 to $500,000.
Alabama’s first Benefit Corporation, CAVU, is also the first Alabama company on Republic.
“We are all about democratizing access to education, so we wanted to democratize access to funding as well,” Sims said.
Sims described himself as “all-in” on Birmingham said the project will help bring outside capital to the city.
