Video interview with Catharine Merigold, Founder & General Partner,Vista Ventures. Catharine has worked with communications and information technology compan…
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Syria: Whose Sarin?
An unforseen reaction came in the form of complaints from the Free Syrian Army's leadership and others about the lack of warning. 'It's unbelievable they did nothing to warn people or try to stop the regime before the crime,' Razan Zaitouneh, an …
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When CRM Isn't Enough: 6 Reasons CRM Should Be Combined with BPM
BPM empowers a company to automate workflows, adapt in real-time, dynamically track progress and make corrective actions when and where needed, and deploy solutions with ease and flexibility. Where CRM and BPM meet. The world is changing …
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The origins of crowd-funding
Crowd-funding is an internet-inspired means of raising money for a project or business from the mass market. It is a relatively recent concept that has its origins in community and arts-based projects which members of the public are inclined to support for benevolent reasons.
For example, a crowd-funding internet site might seek to raise £100,000 over a period of 30 days to help fund the making of a film. If the website users subscribe the cash, they would receive acknowledgement that reflected the scale of their contribution – a £200 donation might be rewarded with tickets to the premiere and a £1,000 donation might lead to dinner with the director.
This “charitable” crowd-funding model has gathered pace and the sums of money raised have caught entrepreneurial eyes that see the potential for crowd-funding to explode into a major socio-economic phenomenon. The key to unleashing such an explosion is through returning financial rewards to investors for their money.
Crowd-funding as an investment model
Different crowd-funding investment models are evolving, creating a new breed of retail “armchair dragons”. The investment models can either take the form of debt (where the website user lends money to a crowd-funded business) or equity (where the investor becomes a shareholder in the crowd-funded business).
The crowd-funding investment model provides a greater rate of return than retail investors are likely to receive from investing in listed bonds or shares. It is also cheaper for the businesses than bank borrowing or institutional investment. The investors can remain passive, as the crowd-funding website operator attends to investor protection issues, such as debt recovery and vetting the underlying business.
Barriers to crowd-funding investment
Crowd-funding as an investment model faces challenges in the form of existing consumer protection regulation. The UK Government has signalled that it is interested in reviewing legal and regulatory barriers to crowd-funding. However, any relaxation of consumer protection measures will be subject to careful scrutiny to mitigate against the increased risk of public scandals resulting from fraud or poor book-keeping.
The obvious subject of a crowd-funding regulatory regime is the crowd-funding website operator. As lending to non-consumer businesses is not regulated in the UK, the debt-based investment model escapes the majority of financial services regulation. However arranging equity investment constitutes activity that is regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) – soon to become the Financial Conduct Authority.
Operators of equity-crowd-funding websites will therefore generally need to comply with financial services conduct of business requirements, such as assessing the appropriateness of investments for investors and holding client money in segregated accounts. Whilst there are structures that enable operators to avoid becoming authorised, such structures can place significant technical and reputational restrictions on the operator’s ability to develop.
Even where the website operator seeks authorisation from the FSA, the current regulatory regime does not permit the promotion of crowd-funding “projects” to the general public, where the project concerned is not housed within a corporate structure. For example, an authorised crowd-funding website operator could not arrange investment by the general public into a computer game, where the investors would receive a share in the net profits generated by games sales. This is because of the prohibition on promoting “unregulated collective investment schemes” (more commonly referred to as “investment funds”) to the public.
The existing regulatory culture of assessing the individual circumstances and knowledge of investors does not sit well with an objective to open up the equity-based investment model to the mass-retail market. This arises from the difficulty firms face in devising cost-effective processes that adequately vet individuals making micro-investments of, say, £10.
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Bitcoin Value Tops 00 Again on Zynga Adoption
The price of increasingly popular virtual currency bitcoin has crossed $ 1,000 (£609, €736) mark again as popular businesses announced that they will accept the cryptocurrency for payments. Bitcoin is currently trading at close to $ 1,038 on MTGox, one …
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World's Second Bitcoin ATM to be Installed in Hong Kong as Taiwan Blocks …
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The NY Times: Against the Minimum Wage Before It Was For It
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Stockman Enters Legal Grey Area With Bitcoin Donations
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Winter expo opens in town today
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Mobileye Integrates its Collision Avoidance System with Accel's VOYAGER …
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If you have distributed all of your business cards and you have nothing left to spare for an upcoming event, you can make business cards on the fly. Creating business card templates can be easy, especially if you already have a previous experience in publications design or editing. If you are design beginner however, you can make use of user-friendly computer applications. These include Microsoft programs, such as Microsoft Publisher. Do not worry if you are hesitant about making your own business card templates. Once you get the hang of it, you can make business card templates that are at par with those made by graphic design professionals. Here are some guidelines on how you can design business card templates on the fly.
– Gather all the materials that you need. These include your paper stock, ink, scissors or cutter, and of course, your computer and printer. You may want to check the differences between paper stocks, so as to know which among them are ideal for making business cards.
– Plot your business card templates on paper. That is for you to be able to plan your business card templates out without having to make use of your design software. You can make major revisions and make the business card templates that you have in mind.
– Get the opinion of your friends and family members as well as your colleagues or employees about the business card templates. They may have suggestions and recommendations on how to improve the appearance of your business card templates.
– Create your business card templates using the design software of your choice.
You can make use of Microsoft Publisher which is ideal for business beginners. You can also make use of design software, such as Microsoft Word. However, this can offer you minimal control over the aesthetics.
– Write down all the information you need to present. That is to ensure that you will not be able to forget any critical information. Do not forget to include the name of your business or company, and all your contact information. These include mobile and landline numbers; email address as well as website.
– You may want to include your business or company logo as well as your slogan. Including all these on your business card templates will enhance your corporate presence as well as improve brand recognition. If you are just starting out in the industry, you need to establish your brand and make it recognized by everyone.
– Test a print sample, so you can know what your business card templates look like on print. Check the quality of your print sample, and train your eyes to look for mistakes. You may want to check the print sample countless of times before you pursue mass printing.
– Make the necessary revisions once you have find out the mistakes on your business card templates. Once you are done, print your business card templates on the paper stock of your choice. Using your scissor or cutter, make sure that the measurements of your business cards are all uniform.
Making business card templates can be quite easy. All you need is creativity. Of course, you also need technical skills to facilitate the creation of your business card templates. Just bear in mind that you need to make a visually appealing business card that would be kept by your target clients or customers.
Brad Kartel is a marketing executive whose passion is helping business owners build their image through using business card templates in designing business cards.
Capital medical venture or angel investor? Most entrepreneurs are confounded with this all-important question today. Who will invest money in their business or, more importantly which sort of investment should they approach? What would suit their business better?
Capital Medical Venture
A really good way of gauging this is by gauging your business venture. If you are confident of the ability of your business venture to provide good returns really soon, then go for venture capital firms. If you want to start large, then this is for you. These firms invest a whole lot of money, yes Im talking big money here their starting investment is five hundred thousand dollars and it goes into millions! But, they also charge a really high rate of interest more than twenty percent per annum. Plus you need to give them quick returns, which generally is not a problem in the medicine field.
A capital medical venture is a venture which is quite challenging to finance because it is a type of venture which requires an extensive expertise of the industry and a very, very methodical form of planning. The good news is nowadays, venture capital firms are actively on the lookout for companies like manufacturers of diagnostics, radiation systems of the intracoronary kind and surgical instruments which are minimally invasive. So if you are starting out on a business in the medical field, a capital medical venture, then this is the best time to start.
There are groups of venture capitalists who are very generous indeed and are willing to provide an entrepreneur with two hundred million dollars on (hold your breath!) a single transaction. What is more they are willing to consider many different kinds of investment structures such as management buyouts, recapitalizations which are leveraged, minority equity positions as well. So they are willing to be flexible.
Whom To Choose?
Coming back to the main point. What are the differences between an angel investor and a venture capital firm?
An angel investor generally has his own pricate money which he is willing to invest in a business. But a venture capitalist gets their money from a collection or rather, a group of wealthy individuals. Thus there is a big difference in the motivations of these two kinds of investors and the reasons behind why they invest.
A venture capital firms main motivation is to get good returns. Moreover, competition for their limited kind of funding is extremely keen. Many firms fund only about five companies out of say, every thousand business proposals they view per year so they are extremely cautious.
Angel investors have, on the other hand, experience in building a company. Sometimes, it gives them a high to invest in new startups and that is their sole reason for investment. Sometimes an idea catches their fancy and they invest for the heck of it.
A capital medical venture is often a risky business, so opting for an gel investor in this case is the best course of action for a new entrepreneur.
Are you planning to startup your Capital Medical Venture? Visit http://www.ventureworthy.com/capital_medical_venture.asp to get the latest tips, and helpful resources.
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Homebuyers missing housing rebound depend on Yellen
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Hidden tax could soar individual health care premiums
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