THE INNOVATION
New technologies have given rise to a multitude of innovative ventures and business opportunities globally. Funding the establishment and growth of these ventures must be equally innovative and new.
One promising development is the creation of internet-based tools that drive value by harnessing the power of “the crowd”—the virtual community of people and resources that are connected through the internet and other technological tools of the digital age. While each individual resource may seem relatively insignificant by itself, the aggregation of these resources from hundreds, thousands, potentially even millions, of people has the power to make a substantial impact on local economies.
Online platforms are now capable of channeling capital to a wide variety of philanthropic projects, artistic endeavors, social innovations, businesses, and entrepreneurial ventures at the click of a button. This process, known as crowdfunding, is emerging as an effective financing tool that leverages the collective force of the crowd and the power of digital technologies to fill gaps in funding needs.
- Crowd Funding enables the early stage companies not ready for VC capital to prove themselves and their business concept with sophisticated and angel investors
- The risk of investment is spread across multiple smaller investors lowering the future risk to Venture Capital and Listed Markets who will gain from the “existing shareholder base” protecting the investor and market integrity as these companies graduate to the upper boards
- Crowd Funding attracts a global audience of small investors for focussed projects
- A large driver of “early stage” investors to move with companies into the upper boards (Book Building and Investor Base)
- Built around the principles of private placement by friends, family, angels, and interest group based financing
- An organic and “viral” growth of an investor database due to the fact that the Companies bring investors with them and market to investors who are friends and family to join the large growing pool of investors within the “Crowd Funding” community built by the use of the Crowd Funding Engine
- Fully automated process with Business Best Practices modelled on the top software systems globally into one custom system
THE CROWD FUNDING ENGINE
The IFINX Crowd Funding Engine is a customizable, full-service Crowd Funding software portal solution that enables companies wanting to create and launch a “Crowd Funding” portal to do so under any regulatory jurisdiction globally.
The key aspects of the IFINX system is that it has taken into consideration all of the transparency, governance, and compliance aspects of each jurisdiction and integrated a “Compliance Table” which enables the consideration of “Types of Investors”, maximum and minimum investments, Anti-money laundering regulations and CFT, Know Your Client documentation, transaction audit trails, clearing and settlement considerations, escrow of funds or pledging of funds based on milestones, share registrar integration, social media integration, and payment or banking options. Within the system any currency or “unit based” offering can be made, depending on the availability and allowance of the jurisdiction to operate within the currency, which includes any national or crypto-currency. The system has specifically been designed to harness the next generation of “Equity Based” crowd funding.
Through equity-based crowdfunding, a company sells a portion of their shares to investors to raise funds. This is comparable to buying shares of companies in the stock market, or through private placement with one important difference – Equity-based crowdfunding happens in the early stages of the company, and these young companies are swarmed with uncertainties and have a low probability of success. This increases the risk of losing your capital.
On the other hand, you would be able to make a lot of money if your backed venture turns out to be a successful company. This is the reason angel investors and venture capitalists are actively seeking and investing in young companies despite the higher risk of failure.
To mitigate some of the risks, the IFINX system has a regulatory like due diligence process for admitting companies and ideas, which include Director Checks, Corporate Documents, and Full AML/CFT and KYC documentation. In addition, the companies admitted to the system generally go through a “stress test” and business modeling exercise with a qualified reviewer of the business. Only when the business has been reviewed and full documentation supplied does it qualify for entry into the system as a “live” campaign.
The system has built in “Push” functions for Investors to view and be prompted to review firms within their investor interests or similar to investments of which they made.
MARKETING A CROWD FUNDING PORTAL
- Aggressive social media marketing on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Meet-ups, Instagram, and various other mediums to attract individual investors and entrepreneurs with ideas and projects
- Crowd Funding workshops, webinars, and Meet-ups
- Public relations as one of the first “equity crowd funding” portals within your country that currently follow existing regulations
- A email, newsletter and telephone marketing campaign to investors and companies to join the database of investors and companies, followed-up with newsletters, new company announcements/alerts, financing closings, and research reports
- Sponsoring speakers at SME, Entrepreneur, and investment conferences
- The integration of the Incubator and the IFINX Entrepreneur Academy to include preparing and listing the companies into the Crowd Funding or Venture Cap listing depending on their maturity level as a firm and idea
- Linkages between the economic development departments, chambers of commerce, trade boards and associations to drive more firms into the crowd funding database and potentially investors
ABOUT THE SOFTWARE
IFINX Technologies crowdfunding platform is the first global trading platform to integrate into a single platform all of the key aspects of a market for crowdfunding. The software centralizes the role of clearing and settlement, registrar services, escrow, accounts, investors, brokers, and listed issuers or securities into one multi-functional exchange platform. The entire system had the ability to show a full audit trail of all transactions done within the network.
GETTING STARTED
- Once you have successfully logged into the website the below screen shot, upon every successful login, will appear:
WEBSITE MODULES
The below screen shot defines the various ‘Modules’ and information displayed on the page:
CROWDFUNDING
Our Crowdfunding platform allows our clients to either view existing Campaigns (no sign-up required) or create a Crowdfunding Campaign to raise funds (sign-up required and due diligence in terms of customer KYC required), invest or contribute in an existing Campaign (sign-up required).
The Crowdfunding platform allows potential investors the ability to sort or filter all Crowdfunding Campaigns in the following manner:
1. Campaigns already live / active:
- Random, by latest or oldest (date), high to low capital raised, region or country (alphabetical order)
- If an unregistered user views any campaigns they will not be entitled to contribute to the Campaign, however for registered users a ‘Contribute Now’ button will appear in the Investor or Broker interface panel.
2. When viewing / selecting a specific Campaign the following information / menu items will be available on the interface panel:
- About, Date set live, end date, image gallery, video gallery, etc.
- Clear display of capital raised in figures and percentage against target amount.
- Social media links if the Campaign owner has included these.
3. The ability to allow a user to sign-up and create their own Campaign, this will include a prescribed checklist that will include the following:
- About your Company
- The current issue or problem being faced or experienced
- The Solution to resolve the problem
- Comparative Market Analysis
- Revenue Model
- Opportunities and or Rewards
- Stage of your Business
- Document Upload i.e. Prospectus
- Company logo, Video i.e. Youtube and Social Media links
The below screen shot of the Investor Interface Panel are the steps defining the creation of a Campaign, logging into the Interface Panel and the capabilities and management of the Campaign:
The client or investor’s submission will then be lodged to a Compliance Officer for review before the Campaign is set to a live status. The client or investor will however be able to edit their Campaign, update any of the submitted information, upload additional images and video, news updates, etc.:
The Below screen shot indicates the Campaign editing mode:
After a Compliance Officer has completed reviewing the Campaign information submitted and approves the uploaded documentation, the Campaign will be set to a ‘Live’ status. An email will automatically be generated to the provided email account that the Campaign is now active and the processes of reaching the IFinX Investor Database has begun.
MESSAGING
The Messaging Panel allows the Company to view Inbox messages, send messages to Admin or Clients and view already sent messages:
FINANCIALS
The Financials module allows the Company to view current account balances, withdraw funds, check uncleared balances, transfer between accounts, credit accounts and create new accounts:
ACTIVITY
The Activity module reports on all activity such as logins, transactions in Financials or even Campaign editing. All events are recorded for Compliance and Auditing purposes:
EXIT
Clicking on the Exit module the Company is safely and securely logged out of the AltSX site.
Please note that if there is ten (10) minutes of inactivity on the current logged in session the System will automatically log the user out for security purposes:
