Too small for banks. Too big for friends and family.
A Buffalo-based fintech startup wants to help real estate projects get funded through the emerging concept of crowdfunding.
Common Owner is a registered crowdfunding portal that lets people publicize their projects online as they seek funding from the community.
This is no Kickstarter – Common Owner will vet the projects and even provide insurance and legal services for those that don’t have their own.
“This is a good fit for businesses with a community aspect, like a business-to-consumer type of company, where the consumers are engaged with your brand,” co-founder Julian Anjorin said. “Crowdfunding lets them invest and financially benefit from your growth. We give them the legal avenue to raise money.”
A variety of partners work on Common Owner, but there are four main team members: Anjorin, who works for Buffalo-based cybersecurity firm Sedara Security but lives in North Carolina; Rich Rogers, an associate attorney at Borrelli & Yots PLLC; Derek King, principal at Preservation Studios; and local software engineer Mitchell Skorma. The entire team can be viewed here.
Common Owner arose from the ashes of Cartefi, a tech-enabled marketplace for government contracting opportunities, founded by Anjorin, Rogers and Skorma when they were undergraduates at SUNY Fredonia. They pursued Cartefi for several years before turning their attention to Common Owner.
Putting the building blocks in place for a crowdfunding company is no easy task, Anjorin said. It has taken years to gain the necessary approvals and certifications – including registration with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority – to get to the point where they were ready to onboard actual projects. Common Owner announced earlier this month that it is partnering with Austin-based Assurely to offer insurance services to potential clients.
The good news about having a high barrier to entry is that Common Owner now has a unique niche in the fintech industry, Anjorin said.
“We are just starting to launch right now,” Anjorin said. “We are actively seeking to scale up so that we can manage the interest we’re seeing and onboard projects fast enough.”
