Tearsheet Podcast: Exploring Financial Services Together

Many people have grown tired of passive investing. Sure, the data show that the more remove the human elements -- our evolutionary biases -- the better we perform in the stock market. But many investors are getting more and more excited about participating more with their investments (I believe that's what's behind much of the excitement behind angel investing). Enter Kickfurther. Part investment platform, part crowdfunding platform, and part ecommerce site, this new company enables people to finance small businesses and earn an equity-like return. I'm Zack Miller, your host on Tradestreaming Radio, and I'm joined by Sean De Clercq, Kickfurther's founder and CEO to discuss how investors are rolling-up their sleeves and helping the next generation of small businesses grow. ***Thanks for joining us on Tradestreaming Radio -- I'm very grateful for your time. It's awesome learning about these new tools and technologies together. If you're listening to this episode on iTunes, please give it a ranking and rating so that others know of the value you're finding in it. Thank you ahead of time.****

It isn't every day you stumble upon your doppelganger. Mesh Lakhani may very well be mine. He's the investor and author behind the Future Investor Course (http://www.futureinvestor.co ), a great new course that teaches all about online investing tools like Wealthfront, Acorns, Betterment, and more. Mesh joins us to discuss his personal journey to adopting these tools and how today's investors are using them. Check out the interview. ***Thanks for joining us on Tradestreaming Radio -- I'm very grateful for your time. It's awesome learning about these new tools and technologies together. If you're listening to this episode on iTunes, please give it a ranking and rating so that others know of the value you're finding in it. Thank you ahead of time.****

LexShares (http://www.lexshares.com ), a new investing platform co-founded by Jay Greenberg, allows individuals to invest in litigation. Known as 'litigation finance', this form of investing hasn't been available to a wide investor base but returns have been as high as 50%. Jay talks to Zack Miller, Tradestreaming's host, about the origin of litigation finance and how investors can now use LexShares to get access to a very exciting asset class. ***Thanks for joining us on Tradestreaming Radio -- I'm very grateful for your time. It's awesome learning about these new tools and technologies together. If you're listening to this episode on iTunes, please give it a ranking and rating so that others know of the value you're finding in it. Thank you ahead of time.****

I don't know about you but some of the most heated investing discussion happen after a company (say, like, Apple) announce earnings. Investors pore over earnings filings in pursuit for valuable information to support -- or refute -- an investment thesis. You're going to want to check out TwoMargins (http://www.twomargins.com ), a new site that allows investors to annotate and share content around regulatory filings. It's like an editorial and opinion layer on top of these really valuable documents. I'm joined by TwoMargins' Akash Kapur to talk about how investors are finding value in sharing their own opinion on regulatory docs. Thanks again for joining us on Tradestreaming Radio, where we discuss technology, tips and techniques to becoming a better -- more accurate -- investor. If you're listening to us on iTunes -- PLEASE rate/rank us to let others know about the value you're finding on this show.

Investment fees can literally suck hundreds of thousands of dollars out of your retirement accounts over your lifetime. What makes this even more aggravating is that as investors, we aren't even aware of some of the fees we pay because fund managers have gone through such lengths to obfuscate them. FeeX bills itself as the "Robin Hood of Fees" and Erik Laurence, the company's VP of Marketing and Business Development, joins us to talk about why minimizing fees is so important for investors and what we can do about it long term to improve our investing returns. ***Thanks for joining us on Tradestreaming Radio -- I'm very grateful for your time. It's awesome learning about these new tools and technologies together. If you're listening to this episode on iTunes, please give it a ranking and rating so that others know of the value you're finding in it. Thank you ahead of time.****

Why is it so hard to know what to do with your 401k? Why is it hard to understand what you're invested in and get advice on how to improve it? Chris Costello, co founder of Blooom, joins Zack Miller on the Tradestreaming Podcast to discuss retirement planning and investing and how his firm is addressing the problem with an easy-to-use, affordable investing tool. ***Thanks for joining us on Tradestreaming Radio -- I'm very grateful for your time. It's awesome learning about these new tools and technologies together. If you're listening to this episode on iTunes, please give it a ranking and rating so that others know of the value you're finding in it. Thank you ahead of time.****

Real estate crowdfunding is one of the hottest investments right now and Fundrise is leading the charge. Lead by co-founder Dan Miller, the firm recently chocked up a $38M investment round and many top real estate personalities participated. Why? Have you ever asked yourself why it’s easier to invest in a stock in China than it is in an office building around the corner? It just is, but if Fundrise’s brand of real estate crowdfunding takes off, that all will change. Dan Miller joins us on Tradestreaming to discuss the case for real estate investing and tells us just how Fundrise is building a crowdfunding investment platform and service for the future.

This episode of TWiC is a new variation on the podcast -- a short experiment. It's just 20 minutes long and it's me (Zack) riffing on the different types of crowdfunding (there are essentially 3 different flavors). My goal was to provide a general overview of the crowdfunding market and then give some explanation on how each is growing and certain trends in the crowdfunding marketplace. Please let us know (you can tweet me at @newrulesinvest or email zack@tradestreaming.com ) what you think. Would you like more of these or something else? Thanks and stay crowdy, Zack and David

Investors are flocking to real estate crowdfunding platforms to get access and invest in real estate and they're doing it in different ways: some platforms focus on investments in loans, others in equity, and others in professionally-lead large scale real estate projects. Grounbreaker.co, a new player in the real estate crowdfunding space, has taken a different approach. The company works closely with some of the largest global real estate firms to use crowdfunding to raise money from its existing investors and to attract a whole new class of investors. Co-founder and CEO Joey Jelinek joins your hosts, David and Zack, to talk about how the real estate industry is adjusting to this entirely new model for fundraising and what the future looks like for the entire real estate industry now that crowdfunding is proving itself viable. (Joey also shares some good resources with us to learn more about investing in real estate). In our news segment, we talk about whether or not there exists a new crowdfunding bum class -- and whether we need to donate or back every Tom, Dick, and Harry who throws up a crowdfunding campaign. Watson on Crowdfunding talks about $4 million -- the size of the recent investment in Spotify that occured on crowdfunding site, Microventures. Lastly, Starkup Nation delivers on his favorite crowdfunding campaign of the week and (not) surprisingly, it has to do with water balloons.

It may look easy to launch a crowdfunding campaign, raise hundreds of thousands of dollars, and hit your targets...but it ain't. The secret behind many of Kickstarter and Indiegogo's largest and most successful crowdfunding campaigns is that they have professional help behind them. They hire guys like Command Partners' Roy Morejon to run integrated Internet marketing campaigns, outreach with guerilla PR, and produce awesome crowdfunding videos. David and Zack bring Roy on to TWiC to discuss what's tips and techniques are working for project backers. In our news roundup, we talk about the growing internatlization of crowdfunding and the Kickstarter Film Festival 2014 in Brooklyn and the rising importance of platform branding in crowdfunding. Lastly, co-host Zack "Attack" Miller digs deep into his experience producing over 20 crowdfunding videos and takes us through the 5 steps to make a captivating and successful crowdfunding video. ***TWiC archives are available on iTunes. If you're listening to us on your iPhone or iPad, please give us a rating. We'd like to hear your feedback.

On this week's TWiC podcast, we interview the guys behind Crowdability -- a great resource for investors thinking about getting a bit more serious about equity crowdfunding. Matt and Wayne are 2 extraordinary entrepreneurs in their own right and have a bold vision of providing an educational and decision-layer to help investors make better decisions when investing in startups online. In this week's news roundup, David and Zack look at the differences between raising money via crowdfunding or turning to more traditional sources of capital. BitTorrent is using its massive network of 170 million users to crowdfunding new forms of content. Lastly, is beer the most perfect of crowdfunding projects? David thinks it just may be... We review CrowdBrewed, a crowdfunding site that encourages (you guessed it), funding of beer-related enterprises.

Creating a new consumer product used to be a somewhat solitary process. But what if you could throw thousands of your closest from around the world into a virtual room to harness only the best ideas for the names, designs, and functionality for really cool, new consumer products? And (here's the kicker), what if you could get paid for your contribution?

On Episode #2 of This Week in Crowdfunding podcast, we invite Prosper's president, Ron Suber onto the program to talk about how he's built Prosper into a multi-billion dollar peer to peer lending marketplace. In the news, we discuss why crowdfunding is catching on in Japan and how it's actually contributing (already) to changes in the country's macroeconomy. We also look at Google's moves into crowdfunding with recent changes to accept money via YouTube. Lastly, we review Crowdability , a great resource for equity crowdfunding. It's a free weekly newsletter that educates investors on how to best approach equity crowdfunding by comparing it to best practices in venture capital, angel investing, and private equity. The newsletter also sends out a weekly aggregated list of some of the best crowdfunding deals online, across platforms. Check out this show and our archives at This Week in Crowdfunding

On the inaugural This Week in Crowdfunding podcast, David Stark and Zack Miller discuss all things crowdfunding. First up, we do a hard-punching news roundup. We chat about Kickstarter's recent rule changes, why the real estate crowdfunding industry is currently receiving so much PR, and a recent study that sheds some light on optimizing crowdfunding campaigns. We interview Peter Renton of LendAcademy and the Lendit conference, who's a true pioneer in the marketplace lending industry. We ask Peter on where the industry is headed. Pay attention to Peter's description of the rumored, upcoming Lending Club IPO and how he expects this to be a seminal moment in the crowdfunding industry. Lastly, in our produt review section of the podcast, we take a closer look at NickelSteamroller which is a great site to both analyze the marketplace (p2p) lending industry in general, as well as analyze individual securities at the portfolio level. That's a wrap for the first of what we hope to be incredibly engaging and informational podcasts we'll be publishing weekly. Check out ThisWeekInCrowdfunding.com

Crowdfunding is changing the way many people invest. Real estate crowdfunding, in particular, has seen massive interest as investors now have the opportunity to invest in some of the top properties in the world, alongside top institutional investors -- all from their laptops or tablet computers. Jilliene Helman is the co-founder and CEO of Realty Mogul, one of the leaders in the real estate crowdfunding sector and she joins me on the Tradestreaming Podcast to talk about how investors are using her platform to invest in cash flows and hard assets. ***Thanks for joining us on Tradestreaming Radio -- I'm very grateful for your time. It's awesome learning about these new tools and technologies together. If you're listening to this episode on iTunes, please give it a ranking and rating so that others know of the value you're finding in it. Thank you ahead of time.****