Everyone Funding Startups

With the delicately provocative title, this episode focuses on the need for development in the VC model with discussants Jouko from Grow VC and our friendly expert Kevin Lawton from Trendcaller among various other roles. Listen to the episode for some real insights in venture capital, but most of all the direction we're going and what possibilities and opportunities are present for us.

In this episode of the Podcast, we present the partnership between Grow VC and Startupbootcamp, discuss the program and coaching in general. Hosted by Markus, discussants Valto from Grow VC and Alex Farcet from Startupbootcamp.

People remember stories, they like stories and they will even share stories with others. We're discussing the value of a great story, with Markus and Jouko from Grow VC, and our special guest, actor and presentation coach Ole TIllmann.

Fresh Breeze in Funding discusses the shifts in startup funding and how the venture capital market is evolving. Discussants Jouko and Valto, as well as Kisko Labs founder and CEO Antti Akonniemi.

Today we’re discussing the global phenomenon of the emerging East. I’m your host Markus and I’m here with Grow VC founders Jouko and Valto, as well as our very special guest Mohan Belani, Director of e27.

With the economy calling out for new ideas and innovations, we're discussing how to create a nurturing ecosystem, to foster great ideas and overall progress. I'm your host Markus and with me are Grow VC founders Valto and Jouko, as well as Bjoern Lasse Herrman, from Supercool School (http://supercoolschool.com)

Innovations seem to be such a topical subject with the economy in rebound, the development of modern business landscape is just incredible and the applications out there are nothing short of fascinating. Discussants: Grow VC founders Jouko and Valto.

Another week, another Grow VC Podcast. Regular drill already, am I right? This week the main discussion point was “Trust and the Internet”, how these two go together and what to remember when surfing cyberspace. This topic was suggested by one of our Twitter followers, @rikutter – cheers mate! This time around I was joined by Grow VC founders Jouko Ahvenainen and Valto Loikkanen, as well as our very special guest Alan Moore. Here’s some main points from the Podcast: Alan introduces himself to our listeners Check out Alans LinkedIn Profile here! Community Member Highlight: LetmeCallu A revolutionary easy-to-use Click-to-Call Solution! Focusing the business strategy Applications in customer service and relations Main Discussion Topic: Trust and the Internet Dealing with business plans and disclosure issues online Trust as a building block for our future Trust as a prerequisite for communication “Trust in order to be trustworthy” Thank you for being part of our movement! In many cases, the movement transcends the one and evolves into something with a life of its own. We’re grateful for your support and urge you to keep moving! –

This week in our Grow VC Everyone Funding Startups Podcast, we focused on a personal issue for us - the underlying reasons behind the birth of the Grow VC community. I was joined by Grow VC founders Jouko Ahvenainen and Valto Loikkanen in this fascinating

In this Podcast, Grow VC founders Jouko Ahveinainen and Valto Loikkanen discuss funding and how to acquire it, from a startups perspective. This episode also features Ear Android (www.ear-project.com) as a Grow VC member highlight.

The second Grow VC Podcast: Everyone Funding Startups with the main discussion topic of Credibility - how to convince your audience. Discussants include Grow VC cofounder and CEO Valto Loikkanen and community servant Markus.

The first Grow VC Podcast – Everyone Funding Startups was launched just a few hours ago. Our first discussion topic was “the Future of Funding” as suggested by one of our Twitter followers, thank you for that! The discussants were Grow VC founders, Jouko Ahvenainen and Valto Loikkanen. The first Podcast featured these points: >> Introduction to the Grow VC Podcasts >> Member Highlight: Executive Mindshare >> Main Discussion Topic: Future of Funding > Current market and inefficiency > Experiences from other actors > Possible solutions You can listen to the Podcast below. Please feel free to suggest discussion topics and ideas relevant to these Podcasts for the future. We’re looking forward to developing all these new channels and means with the community, so make sure you get heard!

On Thursday the 18th of Feb just few days after our launch, the second triple-s/Founders Lounge co-production by Sun, Sand and Startups group took place at the Gran Foc, featuring a talk by Jouko, titled “New funding opportunities for web and mobile startups around the world”. Thanks to Kristian and his team here is the recorded podcast from the event. Below is some of the topics from Jouko’s presentation: new models for startups funding background of Grow VC idea and why is the service like our needed some details of the Grow VC concept what are the main components and features of the service community fund term sheet some statistics from our service how we work with traditional VC’s You can listen for the podcast below and you can also subscribe to Grow VC podcast via iTunes. Sorry for the occasional background noise and that it was cut short at the end. Again big thanks to Kristian and his team.

UPDATE (July 2011): This post is now outdated, as Grow VC has launched the free platform. UPDATE (9th of Aug 2010): This post now includes an audio explanation of what Grow VC is and how it works. We hope you utilize this when getting acquainted with our model – it’s not rocket science, but it does take some patience. Player located at the bottom of this post! – It’s now been 10 days since the launch of our community fund model and we have been following the market response very closely. Overall the feedback has been positive and supportive of what we are doing. So let me take this opportunity to personally thank all of you for your feedback and support. The past 20 months or so, since coming up with the core idea for Grow VC crowdfunding model, it’s been quite a big push to get to this point. First, building our great team and then starting to execute the Grow VC strategy, by designing the service with all of it’s details and then actually building it – while at the same time working through all legal matters and building our overall company structures internationally – I’m very proud of our team! But what’s really fun, is the fact that we are only getting started. To us, we are now in the “Minimum Viable Product” stage and are looking forward to innovating and building our service even further with all of you. In the past year or so, when we have talked about our core model with different people around the world – in person, we have learned that it takes some time to get the mind around all the details of our service. So I think now – 10 days after our community fund launch, is a good time to share more details about our service overall. Outline of business model Grow VC offers a platform for investors and entrepreneurs to find one another, by registering to the Grow VC community online. One can assume one or several of four roles in the community, the roles of an individual, a funder, an entrepreneur or an expert. Each role come with related features available inside the service, to manage start-up fund raising process, related activities, communications and/or portfolio of start-ups. The subscription based membership fee is based on the profile or role of your choice and additional parameters (how much capital you want to raise for your start-up or what your investing budget is). The community then facilitates the matching process. Members who pay subscription fee can assess, evaluate and comment start-ups and related details through transparent information in the community. Direct investments (angel investments) can also be made to start-ups with funder role. There is no fees in direct investments, since fees are only in subscriptions. Subscribed members are asked to suggest investment targets for the community fund out of the available start-ups in the community, for the value of 75 % of paid membership fee, e.g. 15 dollars if the membership fee is 20 dollars. This will serve as a viable peer-rating system, in order to ensure that everyone in the community has to evaluate start-ups also as any investor would. According to the start-ups success, the members will be rewarded based on the Grow VC rating system. This unique model of Grow VC, helps entrepreneurs to start looking at other start-ups like investor and therefore make it easier to understand what type of information funders are looking for and what it takes to find interesting start-ups. In return this will help entrepreneurs to improve their own start-ups profile to make it more complete, understandable and interesting for other funding members. At the same time this will in addition to paying for the full-features, each member also have an opportunity earn financial rewards for finding good investments for the community fund, regardless what happens with their other activities. Different roles in the community The person (free) The most basic form of registration, currently [...]

In this presentation by Mikko Jääskeläinen, Helsinki University of Technology, he talks about International VC Syndication and Performance. Topics covered in this short presentation: – How international are the operations of VCs – Benefits of Cross-Border Syndication – Effects of Cross-Border Syndicates of Exits Presentation was given at Aalto University symposium at Invest Tech Finland 2009 and you can download the whole presentation as PDF from here. If you like to read more about the subject, there’s also another document “a Network resources of venture capitalists: The effects of resource leverage and status on partner exploration of venture  capital firms” you can download from here. Download audio file or lister directly below. You can also subscibe via iTunes.