Crowdfunding start-up raises £300K through own website
The first equity-based crowdfunding platform in the world, Crowdcube, has raised a £300,000 investment through its own website – in just 10 days.
The business, which launched in February, gave away a total of 9% equity to its 162 ‘armchair dragons’, who responded to the founders’ investment pitch on the website.
The finance will be used to fuel the start-up’s next stage of growth, after £1.7m was raised through the platform in its inaugural year.
Speaking exclusively to Startups, Luke Lang, co-founder of Crowdcube, said: “It was an interesting process for us to go through ourselves – to go through the emotional rollercoaster that entrepreneurs do [when they raise money through Crowdcube].
“We’ve certainly learnt a lot from it and we’re going to take that forward into 2012 to develop the site and really accelerate our growth.”
Football stars endorse social start-up
A new UK start-up which allows football fans to discuss players, managers and teams has won the favour of a number of professional footballers.
Rateyourplayer.com, which launched at the end of August, has garnered support from Swansea City’s Danny Graham and Manchester United’s Ashley Young.
The bespoke football forum utilises social media, such as Twitter, to integrate live feeds from players, teams and members into discussions and plans to host regular Q&As with Football League players from 2012.
Swansea City midfielder Wayne Routledge is one of four shareholders in the business.
Theo Paphitis chooses beauty start-up for small business award via Twitter
Dragons’ Den star Theo Paphitis has awarded six start-up businesses, including organic beauty e-shop The Pure Emporia, a small business award via Twitter.
The Dragon asked entrepreneurs to tweet him their business idea between 5.30 and 7pm last night and, after considering thousands of entries, retweeted his favourite six with the #sbs award tag.
Sharon Lowe, founder of The Pure Emporia, which launched in August, said of receiving the acknowledgement via social media:
“We feel extremely privileged to have been noticed by Theo – our business has now been highlighted to over 200,000 of his followers.
“Since winning the award last night, our sales have increased and so has our website traffic.
“We are avid twitterers and cannot highlight enough the benefit that it gives to small business like ours.”
If you’re interested in raising finance using crowdfunding take a look at our crowdfunding platform. We’ve partnered with Crowdcube to offer businesses a new way to raise seed or growth capital.