Investing is not what it used to be.
Whilst the traditional avenues of investing show no signs of slipping away, it is clear that modern day investors now have a plethora of choice on where to allocate their funds. It seems our tech millionaires have been turning more frequently towards investing in startups online.
Darrell Krasnoff at Bel Air investments claimed that today’s tech millionaires are putting 10-15% of their assets towards either funding new start ups or investing back into their own ventures.
The evolution of the internet has made it easy to become an angel investor and opened up opportunities to fund new businesses at an alarming rate. Late last year Crowdcube raised a record breaking £1.2million in 16 minutes!
Whether you have a few hundred spare in your savings, closed a big deal in your business or hit it big time in the online lottery, here are 3 platforms where you can invest in startups alongside tech millionaires:
1. Crowdcube
The Crowdcube platform allows you to collaboratively invest in British businesses. You have three options when investing with Crowdcube:
- Equity Investing – You can start by investing as little as £10 into startups and emerging businesses
- Bonds – Starting from £250+, Crowdcube’s bonds provide a fixed ROI – you will typically be investing in bigger businesses here
- The Crowdcube Venture Fund – If you’re looking to invest £2500 or more, Crowdcube assign you a fund manager who will hand pick and update you on investments of up to 10 different businesses.
The Crowdcude platform makes the investment process highly transparent and interactive. From the video case studies to the member forums you will be able to communicate with members of the startup and also with other investors to share insights and tios.
2. Angel List
Angel List is one of the world’s leading startup investment platforms used by some notable tech investors such as Tim Ferriss and Ben Lerer. Here’s how it works:
- A lead investor (such as Tim Ferriss) forms a syndicate
- You then subscribe to the syndicate and have the opportunity to invest with them
- The lead investor lines up investment deals with both established and upcoming businesses
- Once a deal is in place the lead investor proposes to invest a set amount in the business
- They put up a portion of their own finances towards the deal and the rest is backed by other investors who subscribe to their syndicate.
- If you have invested in the company through the syndicate, you and the other investors will both receive a proportionate share of the profits or losses after a given time.
You can find out more here about investing through Angel List here.
3. Seedrs
Seedrs is a UK based investment platform operating in a similar manner to Kickstarter with video case studies to better inform your investment decisions.
Seedrs is primarily focused at trading initial investments for equity in new start ups. The platforms boasts some impressive case studies such as the accounting platform ‘FreeAgent’ which raised over £1m on Seedrs alone.
Here’s how it works:
There are many other startup investment platforms such as We Funder, Gust and Circle Up. Each of these will provide varying levels of involvement, time frames and will all take their own cut of your investment in different ways – be sure to look around to find both the deal and the platform which suits you.
