AppGyver Says 2012 Is The Year of the Mobile
As we all know, the mobile internet is getting huge. According to some predictions, the mobile internet usage will surpass that of the desktop internet by the year 2015. But instead of browsing mobile websites, people are increasingly accustomed to using internet services via mobile apps. Why? Well, there are number of benefits for using apps over websites, including a more responsive user interface, enhanced offline capabilities, access to hardware features like camera and GPS, and so on.
Customer expectations for mobile services are getting higher
Also, thanks to many great mobile apps, customer expectations for mobile services are getting higher. Those of us who want to provide only the best for our customers know that the only way to go mobile is the “app way”. There might still be a need for a mobile website as well, mainly to drive random mobile site visitors to download the app, and… Continue reading
Wrapping Up The Year of 2011
It’s a new year again, and while preparing for the new entrepreneurial challenges it’s also worthwhile to take a look of the recent past. Did we actually accomplish anything last year? Some projects take longer to materialize than the others, but even each small step is a step forward. As they say… “How do you eat an elephant? Piece by piece”. So true.
One of the great milestone of last year was opening up Venture Bonsai crowdinvesting service. You can read the press release here. The first investment round was completed within two months of the release. Venture Bonsai is still the only pan-European service which follows the European Union financial regulation as well as the national laws. The experiences from an investment round can be found from a post “The First $100K Is Always The Most Difficult.”
Learning always new things is essential for entrepreneurs, especially… Continue reading
Finland Should Copy This UK Investment Scheme
There’s an interesting instrument being implemented in the UK. It’s called Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS).
In the light of the current financial crisis, this kind of tools should definitely be taken into use in Finland as well. It’s not too far-stretched to say that without getting many (really many) start-ups of the ground and really fly, we’re doomed. We should not let Angry Birds fly alone, there space in the sky for the others as well.
This kind of incentives would motivate private investors to invest in early-stage companies which have great difficulties to raise the initial funds to prove their point. Even though there are emerging new funding tools such as venturebonsai.com, it’s not enough. Maybe the best approach would be combining these two approaches: effective deal-flow and process tool together with tax incentives. This would be perfectly doable.
Summary of this proposal is:
- Individuals will benefit from… Continue reading
In The Sharing Economy, It’s All About Trust
It’s old-fashioned to own everything yourself!
We are now living in the sharing economy. Thanks to the Internet and especially the social web, we can now share almost anything we own with anybody in the world (or at least in the neighborhood). You can share your home with Airbnb, your car with Getaround, your taxi ride with Ecolane, your start-up investments with Venture Bonsai and many other things with numerous other services.
The challenge that worries everyone in the sharing world, of course, is trust. It’s one thing to believe that you will get whatever you bought in the Internet. It’s another to let a stranger sleep in your home or borrow your car. In order to overcome this problem each service such as Airbnb require users to create profiles and one way or another earn trust from the other users. The problem is that after… Continue reading
Hitlantis GUI is Awesome
The first impression with this Finnish start-up Hitlantis is simply “Wau!”. The unique way of representing each artist as a “bubble” is unique and visually impressing. What is really cool about this is how the color, size and distance from the center indicate specific attributes such as genre and popularity. Naturally, you can zoom in and out to see more details.
Discovery of new music is not that easy nowadays. Visual discovery of new music is one of the key features in Hitlantis. When closely checking out the visual map, one can quickly notice graphical indicators for example when somebody is listening to an artist. So in addition to listening songs you found, you can see details of the song (of course) but also see what else is being listened … right now.
This kind of user interface works perfectly also in iPad. Luckily there is a cool iPad App… Continue reading
What’s The Strategic Exit Value Of Your Company?
Why Do Big Companies Buy Small Companies?
Big companies buy small companies because small companies are simply better at innovation than larger companies. Employees of a big company do not want to be seen as trying out a new idea and then abandoning the venture midstream if it does not work. The career of managers wishing to move up the corporate ladder do not want to have failures in their history. Now the world of innovations is such where small companies develop new products and services, gather early customers at high cost, and then sell the business to a large company. These large companies can use their existing distribution and/or manufacturing organization to turn the company bought into a large profitable business.
Employees of a big company do not want to be seen as trying out something and then abandoning the ventures midstream if they are not working out as expected.
Should Your Company Be Valued Based On Financials Or Strategic Value?
Many entrepreneurs view the… Continue reading
It’s All About Knowledge, Now in Venture Bonsai
As an entrepreneur, you’re constantly lagging information you should know as of yersterday. But the answer is out there, waiting for you as soon as you just have the right focused forum for your question. When it’s regarding entrepreneurship, getting funding, legal matters – basically anything related to matching your startup with the right resources, including financing – then its name is Venture Bonsai Knowledge.
Venture Bonsai has created both a marketplace and a tight-knit community where investors and entrepreneurs congregate to complete the investment process. And now it also provideds its users with a resource to get answers from the community itself.
When logged into Venture Bonsai you might notice the new ‘Knowledge’ tab at the top right of the page. There you will see all the questions asked by the community. Take a second to browse through it, learn something new, and maybe answer a question or… Continue reading
Californication of a European Startup
Have you ever wondered what would be the right time to transfer your startup to Silicon Valley? For our mobile startup (originally based in Finland) we quite early realized that it would be right away in the beginning. As the biggest interesting market, most potential (and knowledgeable) investors as well as the eventual exit would be in the US, it was an easy decision to make. The journey is still in the beginning, but I thought I’ll share some of the lessons learned already now.
If you already have a company which has undergone its first seed investment round, you may be too late already. Even though within Europe transfering a company from one country to another can be relatively easy (and tax-free) with share swap, it is not possible between EU and USA. This means the transaction would technically be a “sale”, leading among other things to capital gain… Continue reading
The First $100K Is Always The Most Difficult
We’re happy to announce that AppGyver Inc. has successfully closed its first crowdfunding investment round, totaling 100,000 USD. As all the investors were from Europe, the burden related to the SEC regulation did not cause any trouble.
As far as we’re aware, this is also world’s first real crowd investing round! This is also a great milestone for Venture Bonsai as it has now been proven that the whole end-to-end process works well.
Lessons Learned
As this was the first of its kind, we learned a few things (in the process) that companies like AppGyver should pay more attention to.
Lesson #1: Get the Papers Ready!
The first thing regards preparing the paperwork. The round was started on February 9th but some of the must-have documents, such as the Shareholders’ Agreement, weren’t actually ready until late April. As one of the requirements for the investors is to sign (electronically)… Continue reading
Press Release: New Crowd Investing Service Venture Bonsai Launched
NEW CROWD INVESTING SERVICE VENTURE BONSAI LAUNCHED
Venture Bonsai is a new tool for startups running Crowd Investing investment rounds. This means raising money from many parties in small chunks instead of a few larger investments. Venture Bonsai enables versatile pre-investment communication between the investor prospects and the entrepreneurs, combined with social media mechanisms. Venture Bonsai is first of its kind in offering a complete tool set for all parties to manage the whole investment process.
Supporting growth companies is largely seen as important for Europe and its future. However political intentions alone do not help, it is positive action that’s required. That is the idea behind Venture Bonsai, founded by experienced serial entrepreneurs with the courage to implement real and useful tools using private funds.
“Venture Bonsai is the first startup funding tool accessible by any private investor. It allows anybody to become an angel investor with investments just… Continue reading