ChargeBox has launched a campaign on CrowdCube to help it stay ahead of the competition.

The company, which produces and installs smartphone and tablet charging stations in public and semi-public places, wants to boost its sales and marketing efforts, plus inject some money into development of the next-generation devices.

The company wants to make free charging of devices as prevalent as free Wi-Fi in cafes, restaurants, shopping centres and other places as consumers increasingly rely on their smartphones for everything in life.

ChargeBox was launched ten years ago, but other competitors have now popped up in the market, making it a hard industry to crack.

“Loved by end-users who frequently call ChargeBox a #lifesaver, we have provided over 5 million charges so far this year, and we have built (or have in production) over 2,000 machines,” the company explained.

“Our clients include well-known organisations who wish to provide the best customer experience to their visitors and encourage smartphone use, which is highly correlated with increased spending.”

The company has drummed up a fair amount of revenue from rentals, service contracts, short term event rental, a legacy vending business, and international license and software maintenance fees. It has two patents to protect its designed, but is now seeking the next big thing to differentiate its products.

To help take a bigger share of the market, ChargeBox will be spending the £500,000 it hopes to raise on Crowdcube on expanding the sales team, marketing and PR including events, exhibitions and the employment of PR consultants, R&D expenditure, IT development and to a lesser extent working capital.

ChargeBox is offering 7.2 per cent equity to investors and at the time of writing, was 40 per cent of the way through its funding cycle with 18 days to go until the campaign ends.

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A new law announced to help US start-ups raise cash could have a knock-on effect on the equity crowdfunding scene in the country.

The legislation states that anyone – providing they have assets worth less than $1m and have earned more than $200,000 over the previous two years – can buy equity in start-up companies, bypassing the need for those companies to launch traditional equity-based or rewards-based crowdfunding campaigns.

It means anyone will now be able to invest in companies they believe in and they think will bring them reasonable returns, whether they are experienced investors or just want to have a go at alternative investments.

However, small companies are only able to raise up to $1m a year using this method, which may, of course, lead to some still using crowdfunding to raise a higher amount on funding. Additionally, it wll be closely monitored, with investors using specially set up marketplaces enabling them to support early-stage businesses.

“Raising money online remains a securities transaction, and you need to be responsible in how you sell your securities to investors,” Corporate and securities attorney Doug Ellenoff told Business News Daily.  “And they need to make sure they work with qualified professionals to do it in an informed way that won’t harm investors.”

“It’s a real revolutionary change in securities law. Consequently, the proposed rules that need to be fashioned by SEC (US Securities and Exchange Commission)…are complex and not obvious,” Ellenoff added.

The US equity crowdfunding market is somewhat less mature than the UK equity crowdfunding scene, although that could be set to change with Seedrs setting its sights on launching in the country.

The incoming law is likely to come into force later this year and we’ll be monitoring it closely to see if and how it will impact the US crowdfunding industry.

Main image of US Securities and Exchange Commission source: Flickr

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Entrepreneurs favour equity crowdfunding over alternative funding methods, such as VC capital and business angels, according to a report published by researchers from the University of St Andrews and the University of Stirling. St. Andrews.

It said UK start-ups are embracing the “Crowdcube economy,” taking the fund offered via crowdfunding with open arms in comparison to the more traditional means of investment.

The figures mean that the UK has one of the most dynamic equity crowdfunding economies in the world, with 69 per cent of the entrepreneurs saying they favour equity funding over other ways of raising cash.

The reasons are that banks are too expensive, or won’t lend against lack of experience, while venture capitalists demand too much equity in exchange for cash. They also usually require revenue before offering funds, but it the company is at such an early stage it hasn’t managed to make revenues yet, it’s a bit of a lost cause.

Although a favoured option for raising cash, equity crowdfunding doesn’t always offer the successes entrepreneurs expect, with only around 40 per cent of those questioned in the study saying they have completed the funding process.

“The study found strong demand for equity crowdfunding  from entrepreneurs in consumer-focused, early-stage firms,” the report said.

“Many were ‘discouraged borrowers’, attracted by the ability to obtain finance quickly with little diminution in their equity or autonomy. Crowdfunding also seems to confer important intangible benefits to investee companies, in terms of firm valuation and product validation.”

Interestingly, investors also said they preferred to support early stage start-ups through crowdfunding rather than direct investment. The tax incentives offered with schemes such as Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) and the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) mean equity sites such as Crowdcube and Seedrs are more attractive.

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The Togethera private social network developed by an ex-Facebook employee has raised more than £220,000 on Crowdcube.

Founded by Sokratis Papafloratos and Matt Dempsey, Togethera help families and friends stay in contact without revealing private information to brief acquaintances. It sits behind a confidentiality wall, meaning the content can’t be found on search engines or by people not in each group created by the user.

Unlike Facebook, it doesn’t include any advertising and information is never collected or sold to third parties.

“We weren’t interested in aggressively expanding from day one. Too many social networks have quickly boomed, raking in users but then quickly going bust once the hype disappeared,”Togethera co-founder Sokratis Papafloratos said.

“We wanted to focus on providing our first users with an ultra-simple, ultra-private network where they could keep in touch with close friends and family and share photos easily. We believe we’ve achieved that and we’re now experiencing the kind of demand we suspected would come if we got the app right.”

He continued that the company is not trying to compete with the big social players like Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest because it has been designed for use between family members and friends, providing a private space for the to share messages, photos and videos.

“These groups don’t want to be bombarded with adverts or posts from people they hardly know – they want to instantly see and comment on a photo of their granddaughter from the weekend BBQ or a happy birthday video-message from their best friend in Australia. Nothing else,” Papafloratos continued.

To date, Togethera has 50,000 worldwide members using the Android and iPhone app in 17 languages. A premium subscription is gaining traction after it was trialled with some members and now the company hopes to gain more users with monetisation via the premium version.

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Non-profit management platform NonProfitEasy has acquired Fundly to offer an entire platform for charities and other non-profit organisations and individuals to manage their campaigns and boost engagement with followers.

Previously, NonProfitEasy only controlled the technology back-end elements, including CRM and database management, events, donor engagement and fundraising, but this tie-up means it can also offer the crowdfunding infrastructure to make non-profit campaigns work even more effectively, drumming up interest from supporters outside its core market.

Fundly will continue to exist and all features will be offered as they are at the moment. NonProfitEasy will invest in both platforms to improve them and make them more integrated rather than standalone products. The main change is the rebranding of Non ProfitEasy’s services to fit under the Fundly umbrella, with NonProfitEasy CRM becoming Fundly CRM, VolunteerEasy transforming into Fundly Connect, and Ignite changing to Fundly Enterprise.

“The new Fundly will be the only platform on the market that offers crowdfunding, peer-to-peer fundraising, donor relationship management, membership management, event ticket and registration, and volunteer management as an affordable, integrated end-to-end solution,” said Lomesh Shah, CEO and founder of NonProfitEasy. “It has always been our vision to shake up the market by providing great technology in a modular platform that is affordable for any organization. We are on track to make that happen.”

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Board Game innovator Hasbro and crowdfunding platform Indiegogo have joined forces to find the next cult face-to-face party game.

The companies are inviting professional game designers as well as novices to come up with ideas for a completely new game that doesn’t depend on WiFi or mobile phone network to be enjoyable.

Although the first couple of rounds of the competition won’t include crowdfunding, once Hasbro has whittled down the finalists to five, it will run the campaigns on Indiegogo to find the overall winner.

The winner will take home $10,000 and will be invited to Hasbro HQ where they can develop the idea with the game manufacturer’s designers and developers to make the game a reality.

“More people are gaming than ever before and the category has grown tremendously with the emergence of a passionate and talented community of game designers,” said Brian Chapman, head of design and development at Hasbro. “We believe big game ideas can come from anywhere and the challenge with Indiegogo will be a new way for Hasbro to connect with the gaming community and discover a big new idea that we can hopefully help cultivate and bring to market.”

Those who want to take part have until September 30th to submit their initial ideas to Hasbro and the finalists will be announced a month later, when the campaigns will go live on Indiegogo. Both Hasbro and Indiegogo will be on hand to offer support to the finalists in order to make their campaigns as successful as possible.

The overall winner will be announced shortly after the campaigns complete on December 1st, promising a very happy Christmas for one lucky person.

“We’re very excited to see the growing trend of large companies leveraging Indiegogo’s global community of early adopters to source, validate and launch innovative customer-driven products faster and with less risk than ever before,” Jerry Needel, senior vice president of sales and market development at Indiegogo said. “By teaming up with Hasbro, we’re helping talented game developers get the global exposure and access they need to help turn their ideas into reality.”

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If you’re a blind obsessed individual, with not a hint of curtains anywhere in your abode, you’ll know how annoying it is having to close the blinds at night or open them all in the morning – especially if you have a bay window with multiple blinds or the string tends to get tangled whenever you touch it.

iBlinds goes some way to solve this frustration, by allowing you to control all your blinds from one app, whether you’re getting ready for some shut-eye or you really need to wake up and let some light in.

Electrical engineer Eric Barnett decided to innovate smart blinds to make the experience easier to use. “I wanted to have a product which would work right out of the box, “talk” to other appliances, and would be easy to install and manage with just a touch of a button,” he explained. “I visited my local Home Depot and searched online. But all the solutions currently available on the market are either very expensive or too complicated (or both).”

iBlinds has been developed as part of Barnett’s company HAB Home Intelligence, which seeks to find the most innovative solutions to everyday problems. It’s easy to install because you use your existing blinds rather than having to buy whole new units and allows you to automate any two-inch blinds in your home, whether you want to set them up to open and close at a certain time, change the schedule to keep your home cool in the summer and warm in the winter, or just control one single blind (say the ones in your bedroom when it’s time to go to bed).

The Z Wave-enabled device just fits to venetian blinds and controls the tilt of the blind and it’s controlled by a Z-Wave app, available for free on iOS and Android. The motor can be charged via USB, although it packs in a long-life lithium battery anyway.

The iBlind can be backed on Kickstarter where it’s hoping to raise $30,000 over the next month. You can support the campaign by buying the iBlind package from $59 for the super early bird special, which will ship from December.

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A British man has launched a campaign on Indiegogo to raise cash for Greece’s debt bailout – although it closed ahead of schedule after causing Indiegogo to crash.

Community workspace WeWork employee Thom Feeney launched the campaign, offering traditional Greek food and drink such as a postcard of Greek Prime Minister Alex Tsipras for €3, a feta and olive salad for €6 and bottles of Ouzo or Greek wine to fund the project. All items are guaranteed to be genuine Greek goods and they will be dispatched from the country.

When asked whether the campaign is a joke, Feeney said: “Crowdfunding can really help because it’s just a case of getting on and doing it. I was fed up of the Greek crisis going round in circles, while politicians are dithering, this is affecting real people. While all the posturing is going on, then it’s easy for the politicians to forget that. I just thought, sod it, I’ll have a crack.”

However, just a few days after the campaign was launched, it crashed the Indiegogo site and although it managed to raise a whopping €1.9m thanks to the kindness of 108,654 people in eight days, the campaign has now been closed – presumably by Indiegogo.

“This isn’t just about Greece, but about the Greek people, the working classes and trying to help other ordinary people across the world. If governments, corporations or banks won’t help, what can we do but band together,” Feeney continued.

“If we don’t reach that target, what a wonderful message it sends out. It shows that whether you’re a working class lad in Yorkshire, Scotland or Athens other people around the world care about you, even if your government has forgotten. You can make a difference.”

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Crowdcube has released an infographic outlining its staggering successes of 2015 thus far.

In total, 31,832 investments were made from January to June 2015, raising more than £53.5m. However, only £38.9m was invested in fully-funded businesses that reached their goal.

This compares to £35m raised throughout the whole of 2014 – a substantial increase that demonstrates the growing interest in crowdfunding and in particular, equity models.

74 businesses have been fully funded so far in 2015 and CrowdCube estimates this has enabled 2,256 new employees to be taken on by those successful entrepreneurs over the next three years.

JustPark received the most funding, with £3.7m contributed towards its campaign, while The Pressery was the fastest fully funded project, taking just and hour and 40 minutes to hit its target.

The biggest single investment out of the 31,832 made on the site in the first half of this year, was £1m, which was contributed towards Sugru’s campaign. There’s plenty more opportunity for big investment in the coming months, with 56,828 people joining the platform since January.

CrowdCube announced that 19 startups, 36 early stage companies and 19 growth-driven enterprises have been funded. Nine of these businesses raised over £1m in total.

Take a look at the full infographic below….

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Sixteen year-old Ben Towers has become the youngest entrepreneur to post a project on Crowdcube, appealing for £100,000 investment for his social dashboard Social Marley.

The product aims to help enterprises create a social presence and manage interactions with customers or partner effectively by helping them manage, schedule and analyse their Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn and other accounts from one place.

Towers believes it is better than rival dashboards such as Hootsuite and Buffer because it provides a simpler interface for business leaders that may not have a technical mindset and in-depth analytics all wrapped up in a modern dashboard design.

Towers said: “I’m hoping it will be funded by small businesses in the UK – the very ones who need help with their social media and will benefit hugely using this dashboard.”

Social Marley will launch as a free platform for basic users, but will also offer a monthly subscription model for additional functionality (such as the ability to add multiple social accounts for managing multiple clients).

Towers added: “By investing in Social Marley we feel that you will be investing in the future of social media and small business growth.  The funding will be used to build the dashboard aiming to ensure it is the pinnacle of technology and is a system small businesses want and need to use.  The money raised should also enable us to put a dedicated sales team in place.”

Social Marley is appealing for £100,000 funding in exchange for 15 per cent equity. The campaign closes in August.

Crowdcube co-founder Luke Lang said: “Ben is the youngest person to pitch for investment on Crowdcube, it’s a real demonstration of how crowdfunding is a truly accessible route for entrepreneurs, at every stage of their career, to raise finance to get their business off the ground.”

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