Got $50?
If so, Cincinnati's Wunderfund has a suggestion for you: invest it!
The company, a crowdfunding platform, wants to make doing so easy. Instead of requiring large amounts of capital and income, anyone interested in investing can drop little amounts — like that $50 — to get involved in the vetted startup projects of their choice.
Tapping into a larger investment pool was part of the reason that CEO Marvin Abrinica founded Wunderfund.
“We have a simple vision, and that's to see the Midwest become the next Silicon Valley," he said. "We think crowdfunding is a tool that will open up capital."
"We're really proud of making equity crowdfunding work in Cincinnati."
The journey to create Wunderfund began at Procter & Gamble. There, Abrinica worked a variety of jobs, such as innovation recruiting manager. After he left in 2015, he started the marketing agency, Thrivera.
“Several of [Thrivera] startup clients were fundraising at the time, where we created pitches, built websites and worked through their financial models as they raised venture capital,” Abrinica said. “That’s coincidentally when the [Securities and Exchange Commission] released rules on public crowdfunding. Now, I've always been a fan of crowdfunding, where companies raise millions of dollars for things like watches, IOT devices and consumer products. That's when we realized that Thrivera could 'productize' our marketing experience and build a fintech company in crowdfunding.”
Enter Wunderfund. As aforementioned, it's a crowdfunding portal, and it's similar to other popular crowdfunding sites — except it (currently) focuses exclusively on startups and allows investors to be owners in an actual company, as opposed to just donors.
This perspective is unique, as the SEC typically only gives the opportunity for rich investors to invest in startups.
“With equity crowdfunding, anybody, and I mean anybody, can invest alongside the wealthy,” Abrinica said.
And, if the investment pays off, "anybody" can get paid. Like traditional startup investing, Wunderfund will pay out when a startup sells out, and some offer occasional payout through dividends with their equity.
“Alternatively, there are some traditional debt offerings, that's like peer-to-peer lending but on a bigger scale," Abrinica said. "The company might offer a fixed return or percentage ROI. Regardless, we work with the company who's trying to fundraise to put the appropriate strategy in place.”
Abrinica added that the company has its own strategy in mind for growth. It includes expanding Wunderfund to Boston, where it will open an office next month. Then, the company will provide users a chance to invest in breweries.
Earlier this month, Wunderfund also announced a collaboration with UpTech, which provides those startups accepted into the tech accelerator with an investment from UpTech of up to $50,000. Upon meeting the accelerator’s milestones, those startups have the opportunity to launch an equity crowdfunding campaign via Wunderfund, using UpTech’s final milestone investment of $10,000 as a seed kickstarter.
“We're really proud of making equity crowdfunding work in Cincinnati,” he said. “We’re the first regulated crowdfunding portal in the Midwest. In just a few short months, we've helped a half dozen companies raise seed rounds.”
