

Ask HN Startup Idea - lambdom

A website where you can browse between startup seeking money and have the possibility to fund them yourself. For instance, startup X might need 50 000$ . You could give them from 1$ to 50 000$ if you think the startup would be a success. Of course, there would be a way to give back the money if the startup is really a success. It might  be a part of the company (such as 50 000$ = 5%), or a simple: 1$ now will worth (1$ + x) in 1 year.<p>Does is already exist?
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maxdemarzi
Look up the term accredited investors and why you would only want them
investing. Here I'll help you out:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accredited_investor>

[http://thestartuplawyer.com/convertible-notes/life-is-too-
sh...](http://thestartuplawyer.com/convertible-notes/life-is-too-short-to-
deal-with-non-accredited-investors)

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imsaar
Is there a possibility of creating a pool of non-accredited investors that
solve the problems pointed out by the second article?

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mikecane
Wouldn't this quickly run afoul of the SEC? Is this money to be considered
equity, a loan, or what? There are many laws to trip over here, especially
Federal. I know if I gave such a startup, say, $1,000 and it became huge, I
wouldn't want only $1,000 repaid! I'd see myself as an investor for equity and
that would invoke the laws governing stocks right there.

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kadavy
Yeah, it's a shame. The guys over at <http://scalewell.com> looked into this
and it was pretty much impossible to do it legally. So, they're just giving
away the money instead.

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imsaar
I think it is a neat idea and I have not seen such an app yet.The idea can be
called micro-investing or micro-entrepreneur.

What would be the business model of the company facilitating this transaction
(the startup)? Commission on transaction or commission on profits or both?

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daleharvey
this exists in the form of kickstarter.com, I think as others have mentioned
the legalities of investing make the actual investment quite hard, kickstarter
is closer to a charity but with the opportunity for startups to give really
good incentives to put money forward

