Equity Crowdfunding Provides Colleges and Universities with Easy Access to Early Stage, Seed Round Investment Capital

How Colleges / Universities Can Provide Easy Access to Seed Investment Capital with Equity Crowdfunding Platforms

By Robert Hoskins

Providing Easy Access to Investment Capital 

Providing easy access to seed investment capital is a great way to encourage the creative thinking of young innovators. When money is hard to get, there isn’t much point in trying to be creative. But when students realize that there is a better than average chance of putting together a good business plan and actually being able to raise money to fund their ingenious ideas, Equity crowdfunding will serve as the catalyst that stimulates economic development.

The payoff for students, faculty and universities can be tremendous. It only takes a couple of home run investments to generate a billion dollars in revenue when one of their startups is purchased or takes their company public.  

If you look at the current crop of Angel investors, the large majority got their start by working for a company that went public. Once entrepreneurs strike it rich, they want more.  They don’t cash out and retire.  They reinvest the $10 million they earned into a new pool of startups to help them achieve the same success.  This is what most people mean by mentors.

Successful entrepreneurs love to share their success stories with the next generation. The most important step is to create the first wave of entrepreneurs even if it means a small town in nowhere Texas has to pay Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists from California and New York for their consulting services to get the ball rolling.  All it takes is a small college, smart professors, a few successful investors, a Rewards or Equity-based crowdfunding platform and a team of marketing experts that understand advertising, email marketing, PR and social media.

One company that creates a 1,000 millionaires has the capability to investment up to a billion dollars back into the next round of startups. This is precisely how Silicon Valley was built. For colleges/universities that decide to add an Equity-based Crowdfunding ecosystem, it has the potential to start a huge investment domino effect that will result in a wide-spread, long-term return-on-investment for universities, its faculty, their students and the community around them.

Learn more about crowdfunding:

• Building a Rewards-based and/or Equity-based Crowdfunding Ecosystem;
• Providing Easy Access to Seed Investment Capital with Crowdfunding;
• Generating More Revenue to Support Co-Working Spaces and Startups;
• Using Equity Crowdfunding Sites to Finance Incubators and Accelerators;
• Taking Advantage of Investor Syndicates that are Seeking Better Deal Flow;
• Splitting Revenue from Incubator and Accelerator Mentors Consulting Fees;
• Streamlining Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs);
• Cross-Pollinating College Education with Real World Startups; and
• Learning to Build Better Alumni and Local Community Relationships

 

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Using Equity Crowdfunding Sites to Finance Incubators and Accelerators at Leading U.S. Colleges and Universities

Launching an Equity Crowdfunding Ecosystem to Fund College / University Incubator and Accelerator Programs

By Robert Hoskins

Financing Incubators & Accelerators

Most large colleges and universities in the United States have an Entrepreneurship Center or something similar, but schools in smaller population centers lack the presence of well-staffed Incubators and/or Accelerator programs that are necessary to provide students with access to professional, seasoned business, finance, investment and marketing mentors. The value of providing wisdom gained over 20 to 30 years of real world experience from subject matter experts is a critical part of the startup mentoring process.

And even with the right team of mentors in place, these incubator and accelerator programs will need their own investment syndicate to a yield sufficient pool of investors to amass enough investment seed capital to fund startups that advance from an incubator to an accelerator program.

The benefits of providing investment capital are clear to everyone but sometimes the biggest challenge for smaller communities is aggregating the first million dollars to get started and maybe another 4 million dollars to keep the program funded until startups progress far enough to be purchased by a larger company or go through an Initial Public Offering (IPO).

The minimum startup capital needed to finance 10 startups per year at $100,000 each will require at least a million dollars. Sometimes there simply are not enough local resources to achieve this goal.  This challenge showcases the value of equity crowdfunding sites and how marketing equity crowdfunding sites on the internet can make it possible for remote angel investors and venture capitalists to shop for potential investment opportunities at your school from anywhere in the world.

SBIR/SBTT Technology Transfer Programs

Colleges and universities can also tap into federal funding via Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) or Small Business Technology Transfer (SBTT) programs that offer up to $2 billion per year of funding for university incubators and accelerator programs.  Competition is fierce for this funding, but with right application it is possible to obtain funding.

Learn more about crowdfunding:

• Building a Rewards-based and/or Equity-based Crowdfunding Ecosystem;
• Providing Easy Access to Seed Investment Capital with Crowdfunding;
• Generating More Revenue to Support Co-Working Spaces and Startups;
• Using Equity Crowdfunding Sites to Finance Incubators and Accelerators;
• Taking Advantage of Investor Syndicates that are Seeking Better Deal Flow;
• Splitting Revenue from Incubator and Accelerator Mentors Consulting Fees;
• Streamlining Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs);
• Cross-Pollinating College Education with Real World Startups; and
• Learning to Build Better Alumni and Local Community Relationships

 

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