July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Granola doesn’t often enter the sphere of venture capital, but trends in investment and consumer goods are taking granola out of the bowl, and onto the cap table.

Online investment platform SecondMarket is partnering with CircleUp, a crowdfunding platform where accredited investors can make equity investments in up-and-coming consumer product businesses.

“For crowdfunding to work, it has to be done properly with expertise, curation, and due diligence,” said SecondMarket’s senior director of sales Bill Siegel in an interview. “CircleUp is vertically oriented in the consumer goods space and know how to find good deals. With this partnership, investors will have the opportunity to look at really unique niche brands, many in the artisanal food movement. The coolest part is investors can go to a store, eat and enjoy a product,  and think its awesome. Now they can go online and bet the rest of the country will enjoy it too, and that the business will grow and become profitable.”

CircleUp combines the popularity surrounding small-production, high-quality products with the momentum of crowdfunding. VentureBeat reported in January that the platform helped five food-related businesses raised over $5 million by connecting them with investors. By getting featured on the site, these companies were able to the small companies the capital they needed to expand their production and distribution. Products included healthy fruit snacks, granola, all-natural butter alternative spreads, and kale chips.

SecondMarket is a registered broker-dealer that connects investors with investments. While investors may be interested in backing consumer goods companies, they probably don’t have expertise in this field. The partnership with CircleUp will make it easier for investors to find promising opportunities, because they are only presented with a selection of vetted, curated businesses.

“Right now, CircleUp is fielding inquiries from tons of consumer goods companies,” said Siegel. “They know where to source these deals, whereas most people have no background in this. Generalist crowdfunding platforms wouldn’t know how to originate these types of transactions that only comes with industry specialization. The second part is diligence to ensure the companies can execute and scale.”

This partnership is part of SecondMarket’s ‘investment education months’ initiative, which is designed to educate the members about “under the radar” asset classes. SecondMarket provides educational tools such as webinars and white papers, and if interested, the investors have access to investment opportunities within those classes. February is “early stage consumer goods month.” Other themes include health and education.

When asked if SecondMarket would continue to form partnerships like these, Siegel said it would only be with platforms or programs that are similarly dedicated to a specific vertical. The idea is to create specialized “stores” to shop for investments. Like shopping at a boutique rather than Walmart.

Back in November, SecondMarket announced a one-of-a-kind partnership with AngelList, a network and subscriber-base of angel investors, to let accredited investors fund startups for as little as $1000. These strategic partnerships support SecondMarket’s efforts to sustainably build out both side of its marketplace.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

While venture capital funds innovation, the venture capital industry itself is not particularly innovative.

That’s why it’s a bit of a surprise that The National Venture Capital Association has admitted the FundersClub, a well-hyped, online-only funding network, into its ranks.

The NVCA is the preeminent trade association of the venture capital community. It has over 400 members, joined by their commitment to “funding America’s most innovative entrepreneurs,” and it lobbies for public policies that benefit emerging growth companies. Membership is by invitation and only offered to professional and corporate venture outlets.

FundersClub is the first and only online platform to be be granted membership in the NVCA so far. This Y Combinator-backed startup has generated a significant amount of buzz this year for its innovative approach to investment.

“We have always said that we are a venture capital group and consider ourselves part of the venture capital community, but this is the first time someone other than ourselves and our backers is saying that,” said founder and CEO Alex Mittal in an interview with VentureBeat. “This is legitimizing for us, but it is also a sign of the times that transcends FundersClub. It shows how venture capital is opening up to innovation and to the transformational possibility of the Internet reaching this industry.”

Traditionally, venture capital deals happen offline. SEC regulations make setting up a legal online venture capital platform difficult because private companies cannot publicly solicit investment. Furthermore, investors are wary about putting their money into platforms or companies they do not trust.

FundersClub is a network that provides accredited investors with access to pre-vetted startups. These companies are featured on the FundersClub site, and many are fellow Y Combinator participants. Investors from around the world may invest amounts as small as $1,000 until a company reaches its goal. At this point, all the investments are consolidated and given to the startup as one investment from FundersClub.

The venture capital world is one where “who you know” matters and personal introductions are important. It can be challenging for investors and startups alike to break into unless they have a strong network of connections. Startups, of course, want access to a pool of accredited investors because they want money, and on the flip side, investors want access to promising business opportunities. Finding and vetting companies takes time, and not all investors are able to properly go through the due due diligence process. FundersClub adds value by connecting both sides of the marketplace.

Since launching in July, it has raised (and invested) over $16.5 million for startups. The FundersClub portfolio includes Coinbase, Sponsorfied, Tracks.by and Virool, and in a philosophically-confusing twist, itself. The company raised $6 million in October which at the time was the largest ever seed round raised by a YC company. The investors included an impressive roster of big names in venture capital, including First Round Capital, Y Combinator, Draper Associates, Felicis Ventures, Spark Capital, Digital Garage, Intel Capital, and Start Fund. Read more on VentureBeat. 

If you’re an active investor, the odds are you can already track your stocks by logging onto the websites of your various brokerages. But Wikinvest does for your investments what Mint.com does for bank accounts — it makes them easier to manage by showing you the data from all of those accounts in on place. Users can group their investments by market capitalization or industry, customize the data they see by designing their own dashboards, and view real returns that factor in things like interest and fees. The service currently supports 25 major brokerages.

Speaking of Mint, the Intuit-acquired site has its own tools for viewing stock investments. Wikinvest cofounder Michael Sha said the difference is that Mint was built for managing your personal finances, while Wikinvest was designed to deliver useful news and data about stocks. So unlike Mint, the Wikinvest tracker can deliver updates and news from more than 500 sources to help people make their investment decisions.

“We’ve developed a full-blown research platform,” he said. “As a result, we can actually provide a really interesting portfolio tracking experience.”

Wikinvest has raised $2.5 million in funding from DCM. iPhone and iPad versions of the stock tracker are scheduled for release in a few weeks.