A Google search brought Miventure Inc. from New York City to Orlando, a move that paid off for the startup less than two years later in the form of an acquisition.
Miventure, developer of a crowdfunding investment app for startups, was purchased by St. Paul, Minnesota-based Silicon Prairie Holdings Inc. for an undisclosed amount, the companies announced in November. As a result, the two will join forces to build an improved investment crowdfunding portal for businesses, Miventure co-founder and former CEO Jason Crystal told Orlando Inno.
Crossing the chasm
Becoming part of Silicon Prairie offers some advantages, such as tools, licenses and functionality Miventure planned to obtain, said Crystal, now vice president of business development at Silicon Prairie. Plus, Miventure was only able to accommodate individual investors, but Silicon Prairie enables entities, like angel syndicates, to invest too. As part of Silicon Praire, they also can support more security types, as opposed to only SAFE notes. This makes the firm better equipped to serve more diverse industries and later-stage businesses, Crystal added.
Meanwhile, the Miventure team’s knowledge in product and user experience design will boost Silicon Prairie’s investment crowdfunding portal, Crystal said.
Silicon Prairie founder and CEO David Duccini agrees. "Miventure's world-class mobile platform will help complete our vision," Duccini said in a prepared statement.
While the Miventure staff is being folded into Silicon Prairie’s workforce, the Miventure brand isn’t dead. Instead, it will be turned into a “discovery site” in 2022, where early-stage companies can create crowdfunding campaigns and get feedback on them, Crystal said.
The work of Miventure and Silicon Prairie also is important as they can make investment crowdfunding more accessible. The fundraising method, in which firms raise investment dollars by selling securities to the general public through online platforms, is becoming more popular. In fact, companies across the U.S. used the method to raise $215 million in 2020, up 105% from 2019, according to an analysis by equity crowdfunding education site CrowdWise.
“Investment crowdfunding is really starting to cross the chasm,” Crystal said.
From New York to Orlando
In April 2020, Crystal and co-founder Luiggi Pera, who also joined Silicon Prairie's product and user experience team, moved their families to Orlando. Both had planned to move out of New York, and they Google searched emerging fintech markets to relocate to and launch the Miventure app. Orlando came up, and they headed to the Sunshine State, where Miventure went live that year.
The company got some buy-in from Florida’s investment community in January. Miventure closed a $256,000 seed round led by Jacksonville-based JaxAngels LLC, with SeedfundersOrlando LLC, Atlanta-based Johnson Venture Partners and St. Petersburg-based Seedfunders LLC also participating in the round.
Tyler Brown, partner at Jacksonville-based Vertus Ventures LLC, is also a member of angel investor group JaxAngels. After JaxAngels invested in Miventure, Brown acted as an adviser for Crystal and Pera. Brown said he was impressed with how knowledgeable the founders were in marketing and technology and how fast they worked. “For a startup, they move at lightspeed."
Between April 2020 and November, Miventure took advantage of a variety of Orlando-area startup resources, including joining the University of Central Florida Business Incubation Program, participating in the Rally social enterprise accelerator and completing the VentureScaleUp accelerator program.
“There are just some startups that really just take advantage of all the opportunities and incubators, accelerators and mentors,” Dennis Pape, founder of VentureScaleUp and CEO of SeedfundersOrlando, told Orlando Inno. “They’re like sponges for absorbing stuff. [Miventure is] one of those companies.”
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