
Neufund raises €2M for its blockchain-based venture fund - ptrptr
https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/17/neufund/
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kwikiel
Direct investing in ICO is major risk for investors. There is very little due
diligence and investors don't have downside protection and it's unregulated.

Instead of starting with complicated solution on blockchain, NeuFund is
starting like a regular VC capital that will be doing ICOs for his companies.
This way they will provide best of both worlds

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zoe_adamovicz
that's right. thanks @kwikiel!

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valdiorn
yeah good luck collecting on your equity when the company you "invested" in
gets sold. How will they guarantee that the stake I've bought in the company
is declared a legally mine? Will this ownership stand in a court of law?

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exposheet
You're right, maybe someone on HN can give us more info

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rudolfix
there is a paper investment agreement signed with startup that says that
certain shares are represented as a tokens in smart contract and whoever owns
those tokens has shareholder rights (voting power, dividends) etc. so owning
tokens is no different than owning shares. this paper agreement has a
corresponding smart contract agreement (they are linked via hash) and together
they protect our investment both on blockchain and in so called off-chain
world

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mbrumlow
Seems like you could have done this without needing to use a blockchain... Do
we have to use a blockchain for everything now?

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zoe_adamovicz
you're right that one can do funds without blockchain. but Neufund is not just
a fund. I think that the Geektime article below is descirbing it in a lot more
detail than TC. [http://www.geektime.com/2017/01/17/berlin-cryptocurrency-
hyb...](http://www.geektime.com/2017/01/17/berlin-cryptocurrency-hybrid-vc-
neufund-raises-e2m-to-upend-startup-investing-as-we-know-it/)

what Neufund does, in short, is providing the way to fund ANY STARTUP with the
ICO process on blockchain. not just Blockchain startups. that's the key
difference between us, other funds, and also ICO process itself, which
currently is reserved to Blockchain companies only.

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mbrumlow
> “If I am a founder, I have to wait until I sell my company to make some
> money,” says Adamovicz, explaining that the core of their innovation is the
> ability to make investment money much more tradable. “Our system is making
> this classically static, illiquid asset liquid. We make this money flow very
> fast.”

From the article you linked.

I take issue with that. Making it easy for founders to cash out before they
sell the company is just going to make it easy for founders to exit on a bad
investment while passing the loss off to whoever they can market the loss to.
Founders need to stay financially connected to what the found and see it
through to a proper sell or eat the cost.

A system like this will just create a ton of companies with "good" ideas where
the founders then tokenize their companies, sell them off and then let them
fail. Part of being a founder is having risk. If the risk is too much then
maybe your idea is bad. If your idea is good, then the risk should not be a
problem.

That all being said, still you could do this without blockchain. You could
just as easy -- per your example -- reserve 5% of your company to be sold to
individuals and not big investors or PEs. You could even still do Newfund
without having a blockchain as well. So to me, using a blockchain is just a
way to hype of a bad idea.

