#startup investor platform

[klubwork]

The Impact of Equity Free Funding on The Indian Startup Ecosystem

In recent years, the Indian startup ecosystem has experienced significant growth, driven by innovative ideas and the increasing availability of diverse funding sources. Among these, equity free funding has emerged as a transformative force, reshaping how startups secure capital and grow. This blog explores the impact of equity-free funding on the Indian startup landscape, highlighting its advantages and potential challenges.

Understanding equity-free funding

Equity-free funding refers to financial support provided to startups without requiring them to give up a share of their company. Unlike traditional funding methods, where investors receive equity in exchange for their investment, equity-free funding allows startups to retain full ownership and control. This funding model can come in various forms, including grants, competitions, and accelerator programs, and has gained traction globally.

The rise of equity free funding in India

The Indian startup ecosystem has seen a surge in the availability of equity-free funding opportunities. Numerous government initiatives, private organisations, and international bodies have launched programs to support startups without diluting their ownership. This shift is significant in a country where access to capital has traditionally been a major barrier for entrepreneurs.

Startup India, a flagship initiative of the Indian government, has been instrumental in promoting equity-free funding. The initiative offers various grants and supports programs aimed at nurturing innovation and entrepreneurship. Additionally, several private startup investor platform have introduced equity-free funding options, providing startups with multiple avenues to secure necessary funds.

The role of startup investor platform

Startup investor platform play a critical role in the dissemination and accessibility of equity-free funding. These platforms connect startups with potential funding sources, providing a centralised location for entrepreneurs to explore various options.

These platforms not only facilitate access to funds but also offer mentorship, networking, and resources that are invaluable for startup growth. By leveraging the capabilities of the startup investor platform, Indian startups can increase their chances of securing equity-free funding and other support services.

The future of equity-free funding in India

The future of equity-free funding in India looks promising, with increasing recognition of its importance in fostering a vibrant startup ecosystem. Continued efforts by the government, private sector, and international organisations to expand the availability of equity-free funding will be crucial. Additionally, enhancing the visibility and accessibility of these opportunities through the startup investor platform will further strengthen the ecosystem.

One noteworthy example is Klub, a platform that focuses on revenue-based financing, providing startups with growth capital without requiring equity. Klub's approach is a testament to the evolving startup funding in India, offering startups flexible funding solutions that align with their revenue streams.

Conclusion

Equity free funding is making a substantial impact on the Indian startup ecosystem. By providing financial support without diluting ownership, it empowers startups to innovate, grow, and succeed. While challenges remain, the increasing availability of equity free funding opportunities, supported by startup investor platform, holds the promise of a brighter future for Indian entrepreneurs. As the ecosystem continues to evolve, equity free funding for startups will undoubtedly play a pivotal role in shaping the next generation of successful businesses in India.

[crazymoneyapp]

7 Tips To Effectively Pitch Your Business To Potential Investors

After you have established your business and started earning revenue, it’s time to get on the next step of your entrepreneurial journey - raising funding for your startup. Nowadays, you can register on a startup funding app to present your business idea to potential investors. Read more

[rishabhgolchhabusiness]

Venture Catalysts is the #1 startup investor available in India.

Raising startup funding is one of the company's most exciting and challenging times. Venture catalysts have supported businesses in their early phases, especially when they are looking to acquire capital. Check out here to know more about them https://venturecatalysts.in/

[a16zportfolio]

DStarter - IMO Web 3.0 Funding Platform For Investors & Startups

DStarter is a DAO-governed, smart-contracts escrowed fundraising platform for Web3 VCs & startups based on milestone-completion (Initial Milestone Offering for startups & VCs). In simpler words, DStarter is platform where startups can submit their "Buidls", and if approved, they can create a pool to host "Initial Milestone Offering".

The term, IMO is coined from the fundraising concept existing in our platform, that enables startups to raise funds through a pool in proportion wise as they keep on achieving their pre-defined milestones that were deployed on blockchain. The whole process of IMO (Initial Milestone Offering) is governed by our native ImoDAO. In IMO, instead of allocating the funds completely at once, this model allows the investors to vote and release the funds at different timeline required to achieve the next milestone. These milestones are measurable goals pre-decided and deployed on blockchain.

[robertreich]

Should Billionaires Exist? 

Do billionaires have a right to exist?

America has driven more than 650 species to extinction. And it should do the same to billionaires.

Why? Because there are only five ways to become one, and they’re all bad for free-market capitalism:

1. Exploit a Monopoly.

Jamie Dimon is worth $2 billion today… but not because he succeeded in the “free market.” In 2008, the government bailed out his bank JPMorgan and other giant Wall Street banks, keeping them off the endangered species list.

This government “insurance policy” scored these struggling Mom-and-Pop megabanks an estimated $34 billion a year.

But doesn’t entrepreneur Jeff Bezos deserve his billions for building Amazon?

No, because he also built a monopoly that’s been charged by the federal government and 17 states for inflating prices, overcharging sellers, and stifling competition like a predator in the wild.

With better anti-monopoly enforcement, Bezos would be worth closer to his fair-market value.

2. Exploit Inside Information

Steven A. Cohen, worth roughly $20 billion headed a hedge fund charged by the Justice Department with insider trading “on a scale without known precedent.” Another innovator!

Taming insider trading would level the investing field between the C Suite and Main Street.

3.  Buy Off Politicians

That’s a great way to become a billionaire! The Koch family and Koch Industries saved roughly $1 billion a year from the Trump tax cut they and allies spent $20 million lobbying for. What a return on investment!

If we had tougher lobbying laws, political corruption would go extinct.

4. Defraud Investors

Adam Neumann conned investors out of hundreds of millions for WeWork, an office-sharing startup. WeWork didn’t make a nickel of profit, but Neumann still funded his extravagant lifestyle, including a $60 million private jet. Not exactly “sharing.”

Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of fraud for her blood-testing company, Theranos. So was Sam Bankman-Fried of crypto-exchange FTX. Remember a supposed billionaire named Donald Trump? He was also found to have committed fraud.

Presumably, if we had tougher anti-fraud laws, more would be caught and there’d be fewer billionaires to preserve.

5. Get Money From Rich Relatives

About 60 percent of all wealth in America today is inherited.

That’s because loopholes in U.S. tax law —lobbied for by the wealthy — allow rich families to avoid taxes on assets they inherit. And the estate tax has been so defanged that fewer than 0.2 percent of estates have paid it in recent years.

Tax reform would disrupt the circle of life for the rich, stopping them from automatically becoming billionaires at their birth, or someone else’s death.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not arguing against big rewards for entrepreneurs and inventors. But do today’s entrepreneurs really need billions of dollars? Couldn’t they survive on a measly hundred million?

Because they’re now using those billions to erode American institutions. They spent fortunes bringing Supreme Court justices with them into the wild.They treated news organizations and social media platforms like prey, and they turned their relationships with politicians into patronage troughs.

This has created an America where fewer than ever can become millionaires (or even thousandaires) through hard work and actual innovation.

If capitalism were working properly, billionaires would have gone the way of the dodo.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

No, “convenience” isn’t the problem

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in CHICAGO (Apr 17), Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Using Amazon, or Twitter, or Facebook, or Google, or Doordash, or Uber doesn't make you lazy. Platform capitalism isn't enshittifying because you made the wrong shopping choices.

Remember, the reason these corporations were able to capture such substantial market-share is that the capital markets saw them as a bet that they could lose money for years, drive out competition, capture their markets, and then raise prices and abuse their workers and suppliers without fear of reprisal. Investors were chasing monopoly power, that is, companies that are too big to fail, too big to jail, and too big to care:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

The tactics that let a few startups into Big Tech are illegal under existing antitrust laws. It's illegal for large corporations to buy up smaller ones before they can grow to challenge their dominance. It's illegal for dominant companies to merge with each other. "Predatory pricing" (selling goods or services below cost to prevent competitors from entering the market, or to drive out existing competitors) is also illegal. It's illegal for a big business to use its power to bargain for preferential discounts from its suppliers. Large companies aren't allowed to collude to fix prices or payments.

But under successive administrations, from Jimmy Carter through to Donald Trump, corporations routinely broke these laws. They explicitly and implicitly colluded to keep those laws from being enforced, driving smaller businesses into the ground. Now, sociopaths are just as capable of starting small companies as they are of running monopolies, but that one store that's run by a colossal asshole isn't the threat to your wellbeing that, say, Walmart or Amazon is.

All of this took place against a backdrop of stagnating wages and skyrocketing housing, health, and education costs. In other words, even as the cost of operating a small business was going up (when Amazon gets a preferential discount from a key supplier, that supplier needs to make up the difference by gouging smaller, weaker retailers), Americans' disposable income was falling.

So long as the capital markets were willing to continue funding loss-making future monopolists, your neighbors were going to make the choice to shop "the wrong way." As small, local businesses lost those customers, the costs they had to charge to make up the difference would go up, making it harder and harder for you to afford to shop "the right way."

In other words: by allowing corporations to flout antimonopoly laws, we set the stage for monopolies. The fault lay with regulators and the corporate leaders and finance barons who captured them – not with "consumers" who made the wrong choices. What's more, as the biggest businesses' monopoly power grew, your ability to choose grew ever narrower: once every mom-and-pop restaurant in your area fires their delivery drivers and switches to Doordash, your choice to order delivery from a place that payrolls its drivers goes away.

Monopolists don't just have the advantage of nearly unlimited access to the capital markets – they also enjoy the easy coordination that comes from participating in a cartel. It's easy for five giant corporations to form conspiracies because five CEOs can fit around a single table, which means that some day, they will:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/18/cursed-are-the-sausagemakers/#how-the-parties-get-to-yes

By contrast, "consumers" are atomized – there are millions of us, we don't know each other, and we struggle to agree on a course of action and stick to it. For "consumers" to make a difference, we have to form institutions, like co-ops or buying clubs, or embark on coordinated campaigns, like boycotts. Both of these tactics have their place, but they are weak when compared to monopoly power.

Luckily, we're not just "consumers." We're also citizens who can exercise political power. That's hard work – but so is organizing a co-op or a boycott. The difference is, when we dog enforcers who wield the power of the state, and line up behind them when they start to do their jobs, we can make deep structural differences that go far beyond anything we can make happen as consumers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

We're not just "consumers" or "citizens" – we're also workers, and when workers come together in unions, they, too, can concentrate the diffuse, atomized power of the individual into a single, powerful entity that can hold the forces of capital in check:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/10/an-injury-to-one/#is-an-injury-to-all

And all of these things work together; when regulators do their jobs, they protect workers who are unionizing:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

And strong labor power can force cartels to abandon their plans to rig the market so that every consumer choice makes them more powerful:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/01/how-the-writers-guild-sunk-ais-ship/

And when consumers can choose better, local, more ethical businesses at competitive rates, those choices can make a difference:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/10/view-a-sku/

Antimonopoly policy is the foundation for all forms of people-power. The very instant corporations become too big to fail, jail or care is the instant that "voting with your wallet" becomes a waste of time.

Sure, choose that small local grocery, but everything on their shelves is going to come from the consumer packaged-goods duopoly of Procter and Gamble and Unilever. Sure, hunt down that local brand of potato chips that you love instead of P&G or Unilever's brand, but if they become successful, either P&G or Unilever will buy them out, and issue a press release trumpeting the purchase, saying "We bought out this beloved independent brand and added it to our portfolio because we know that consumers value choice."

If you're going to devote yourself to solving the collective action problem to make people-power work against corporations, spend your precious time wisely. As Zephyr Teachout writes in Break 'Em Up, don't miss the protest march outside the Amazon warehouse because you spent two hours driving around looking for an independent stationery so you could buy the markers and cardboard to make your anti-Amazon sign without shopping on Amazon:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/29/break-em-up/#break-em-up

When blame corporate power on "laziness," we buy into the corporations' own story about how they came to dominate our lives: we just prefer them. This is how Google explains away its 90% market-share in search: we just chose Google. But we didn't, not really – Google spends tens of billions of dollars every single year buying up the search-box on every website, phone, and operating system:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Blaming "laziness" for corporate dominance also buys into the monopolists' claim that the only way to have convenient, easy-to-use services is to cede power to them. Facebook claims it's literally impossible for you to carry on social relations with the people that matter to you without also letting them spy on you. When we criticize people for wanting to hang out online with the people they love, we send the message that they need to choose loneliness and isolation, or they will be complicit in monopoly.

The problem with Google isn't that it lets you find things. The problem with Facebook isn't that it lets you talk to your friends. The problem with Uber isn't that it gets you from one place to another without having to stand on a corner waving your arm in the air. The problem with Amazon isn't that it makes it easy to locate a wide variety of products. We should stop telling people that they're wrong to want these things, because a) these things are good; and b) these things can be separated from the monopoly power of these corporate bullies:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/08/divisibility/#technognosticism

Remember the Napster Wars? The music labels had screwed over musicians and fans. 80 percent of all recorded music wasn't offered for sale, and the labels cooked the books to make it effectively impossible for musicians to earn out their advances. Napster didn't solve all of that (though they did offer $15/user/month to the labels for a license to their catalogs), but there were many ways in which it was vastly superior to the system it replaced.

The record labels responded by suing tens of thousands of people, mostly kids, but also dead people and babies and lots of other people. They demanded an end to online anonymity and a system of universal surveillance. They wanted every online space to algorithmically monitor everything a user posted and delete anything that might be a copyright infringement.

These were the problems with the music cartel: they suppressed the availability of music, screwed over musicians, carried on a campaign of indiscriminate legal terror, and lobbied effectively for a system of ubiquitous, far-reaching digital surveillance and control:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/02/nonbinary-families/#red-envelopes

You know what wasn't a problem with the record labels? The music. The music was fine. Great, even.

But some of the people who were outraged with the labels' outrageous actions decided the problem was the music. Their answer wasn't to merely demand better copyright laws or fairer treatment for musicians, but to demand that music fans stop listening to music from the labels. Somehow, they thought they could build a popular movement that you could only join by swearing off popular music.

That didn't work. It can't work. A popular movement that you can only join by boycotting popular music will always be unpopular. It's bad tactics.

When we blame "laziness" for tech monopolies, we send the message that our friends have to choose between life's joys and comforts, and a fair economic system that doesn't corrupt our politics, screw over workers, and destroy small, local businesses. This isn't true. It's a lie that monopolists tell to justify their abuse. When we repeat it, we do monopolists' work for them – and we chase away the people we need to recruit for the meaningful struggles to build worker power and political power.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/12/give-me-convenience/#or-give-me-death

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[genericpuff]

on the closure of MochaJump, and why we're our own worst enemies in this industry.

"MochaJump? What was that?" is probably your first question, and I'm gonna simply respond with, "Exactly."

MochaJump was a small startup platform made by /u/nunojay2 and a second site engineer (whose name I am not informed of) on reddit. It wasn't anything extraordinary, just a startup site that aimed to offer a more viable alternative to Webtoons and Tapas, with a focus on offering equal visibility to creators, focused recommendation algorithms, loosened restrictions on NSFW content, and bigger cuts for creators on their generated revenue.

Of course, such promises are a tall order, but the creator did their best to host regular discussions with creators in art and webtoon communities to get feedback on what creators really wanted out of their platforms, and they researched what they would need to make in order to keep the site afloat (it came out pretty low at $2 per user per month). Hopes were high and the site launched with a small but eager userbase.

It stayed small. The site shut down in November 2022, just 6 months after launching in May 2022.

Now, I'm not gonna sit here on some soapbox and blame anyone for the site closing down. I unfortunately didn't get much chance to use the site myself so there's surely more I could have done on my own part to help it gain traction. But this is a regular occurrence for start-ups like this, especially in an industry that's as notoriously unprofitable as webcomics. We've seen titans such as SmackJeeves and Inkblazers fall, and MochaJump was merely an infant by comparison.

But it makes me think of how we view and treat these startups as a whole. How we as readers and creators alike have become so trained to exclusively use corporate platforms like Webtoons and Tapas on the promise of "bigger gains". Unlike these bigger companies, platforms like MochaJump depend on building a strong userbase as quickly as possible, and need to find ways to generate revenue to keep things running, otherwise it's only a matter of time before they close down. They don't have a massive conglomerate like Naver or Kakao to pad their pockets through their failures. They don't have the money or reach to inject themselves into society through bus terminal ads and convention sponsorships. They don't have the investors to sink money into their platform until it becomes profitable in return.

So we don't use them. Readers don't use them because we don't see the point in using a platform that has no content... and thus creators don't use them because we don't see the point in publishing our content on a platform with no userbase. Creators seek a place that's "tight knit" and "easy to get seen", but will only post to places that come pre-loaded with massive audiences; because it's not enough anymore to have a couple hundred followers, we're in 2023 now, in the year of consumer bloat, where we expect to now pull in thousands if not millions to be considered a "success". And readers seek a place that offers high-quality high-amount content at the tip of their fingertips, but don't want to pay for the access to these works, and in the case of apps like WT, have given up in trying to support these creators through the platforms themselves because they know that those artists they want to support will likely never see a dime.

The fact of this problem is simple, yet many people seem to ignore it - we cannot expect to have a platform that is tight knit, profitable, and sustainable. These places do not exist, not so long as we continue to raise the bar on what makes a "successful" subscriber count, not so long as we continue to patronize platforms that exploit their artists and writers, and not so long as we keep chasing the dragon of "what these websites used to be". These platforms never used to 'be' anything, they merely existed in one point of time that is now long gone, when owning a smartphone was a luxury and not a need, when online video content wasn't being tethered together by ads, and when the Internet wasn't owned and entirely managed by the same three corporations, the likes of which we haven't seen since cable TV.

Platforms like Tapas and Webtoons are - besides unsustainable - unable to exist and profit in the way they do without undercutting someone along the way. Whether it's underpaying their creators, undercutting their communities, or underexposing the works that have been buried, someone will get the shit hand in the deal and that someone is usually ALWAYS someone who will rarely ever stand to gain anything in the long run from using these platforms despite their issues. The 1% got theirs, and the 10% are barely getting by, while the remaining 89% are pushing onwards, because they have faith in the systemic online enshittification that demands conformity to a single formula for "success".

We are our own worst enemies in this industry. Webcomics are one of the few online mediums that still truly belong to the people - anyone can make them, anyone can find joy in them, but we're letting platforms like Webtoons and Tapas and all the other massive corporate apps rob us of that joy and accessibility in the pursuit of "success" and profiting. Webtoons was never the sole way to profit off this medium and yet I still see people every day who underestimate the existence of legitimate publishing houses and self-publishing, who think that publishing on Webtoons and landing an Originals deal is the only way to find success in this industry. This is meant to be the era of creators, of self-starting and self-actualization, and yet we're still handing all of that control over to corporations that only seek to exploit our art, bodies, and labor, while convincing ourselves that this will somehow all be worth it. We stick with Webtoons, despite the numerous controversies it's been involved in and the lack of support it's given even its own hired creators. We stick with Tapas, despite the undercutting of its most core components such as its community and the outlier genres it used to be known for hosting. We find new ways to justify using platforms that are steadily going downhill - Patreon, Twitter/X, Youtube, Instagram, Facebook - because we've been convinced that these are the routes to success, so if we acknowledge their failures, then "success" can no longer exist.

Because we need to pay rent. Because we need to eat. Because we need to survive. Because it's a lot more complicated than just "stepping away". Because the startups just don't have any of the surface level potential for us to immediately identify and get on board with, so we don't give them a chance.

I realize this post got very existential and depressing. I've been creating comics for well over a decade now, largely unnoticed, and I've fallen victim to these same limiting mindsets that we have to stick to one way, one "formula" for success - a formula that changes with the wind and only works for those who get in on the ground floor. It's been slowly killing me from the very beginning, robbing me of my joy to create, of my reason to even do this in the first place - to tell and share stories with others, to express myself creatively, to live my life surrounded by art and stories and creations made by and for others. It's made me tired and miserable, and I can tell it's done the same to those who have shared that boat with me.

But there's one silver lining I can always be sure of, and it's one I was reminded of after realizing I was still in the MochaJump Discord, with one announcement post that I hadn't yet read.

Webcomics are one of the few online mediums that still truly belong to the people. Corporations are trying their hardest to take that power away. Let's not continue to let them.

If you want to help sustain, patronize, and contribute to the growth of sites that are still being operated by small teams (or even one man armies), please, consider checking out the following websites, some of which serve as platforms or publishers, others which operate as link directories for independent sites run by creators.

ComicFury GlobalComix TopWebcomics The Webcomic List The Webcomic Library Hiveworks SpiderForest SmackJeeves Archive Inkblot.art And whoever wants to use the GitHub source code used for MochaJump (RIP)

Let's do our part to decentralize webcomics again. We may not be able to leave the platforms that weakly sustain us, but we can still support those that strengthen and support us.

[charliejaneanders]

I don’t see how else to make sense of it. 2022 was the year the 20-year tech bubble finally burst. 2023 was still bad for startups, and was full of bad headlines for the big platforms. And yet, in the markets, tech investors just took a deep collective breath and started inflating the next bubble, as though the previous year had never happened.

Silicon Valley runs on Futurity

[klubwork]

The Future of Startup Funding in India: Exploring Equity Free Options

The landscape of startup funding in India is undergoing a significant transformation. Traditionally, startups in India have relied heavily on equity-based funding, where investors receive a stake in the company in exchange for capital. However, the rise of equity free funding options is poised to revolutionise the way startups secure the financial resources they need to grow and thrive.

Equity free funding for startups is an innovative approach that allows entrepreneurs to obtain funding without giving away a portion of their company's ownership. This model is particularly attractive to founders who wish to retain control over their business while still accessing the capital necessary for expansion. Startup investor platform are playing a crucial role in this shift, providing a variety of equity-free funding solutions tailored to the unique needs of Indian startups.

One of the key drivers behind the growing popularity of equity-free funding in India is the increasing number of startup investor platform offering diverse funding options. These platforms connect startups with investors who are willing to provide financial support without demanding equity in return. Instead, they may seek returns through alternative arrangements such as revenue-sharing agreements or convertible debt.

Convertible debt is another popular equity-free funding option available on startup investor platform. In this arrangement, startups receive a loan that can later be converted into equity at a future financing round, often at a discounted rate. This provides startups with immediate capital while giving investors the potential for equity participation if the company succeeds.

The emergence of equity-free funding is particularly significant in the context of startup funding in India. The country's startup ecosystem is vibrant and rapidly evolving, with numerous innovative ventures emerging across various sectors. However, many Indian startups face challenges in securing traditional equity-based funding, particularly in the early stages when their business models are still being validated.

Equity free funding for startups is a viable alternative, enabling them to access the capital they need to grow without surrendering ownership. This approach is especially beneficial for startups in industries where rapid scaling and reinvestment are crucial, such as technology, e-commerce, and consumer goods.

One of the notable platforms contributing to the equity free funding landscape in India is Klub. Klub specialises in providing revenue-based financing to growth-stage companies, offering a flexible and founder-friendly approach to funding. By focusing on revenue-sharing models, Klub empowers startups to fuel their growth without diluting equity, thereby preserving the founders' control and long-term vision.

The future of startup funding in India looks promising with the increasing availability of equity-free options. As more startup investor platform embrace this model, Indian entrepreneurs will have greater access to diverse funding sources that align with their business goals. This shift towards equity-free funding is not just a trend but a fundamental change that has the potential to redefine the Indian startup ecosystem.

In conclusion, the rise of equity-free funding options is set to transform the future of startup funding in India. With the support of innovative startup investor platform like Klub, Indian startups can now explore funding opportunities that allow them to retain control over their ventures while accessing the capital necessary for growth. As this trend continues to gain momentum, the Indian startup ecosystem is poised for unprecedented growth and success, driven by a new era of funding flexibility and entrepreneurial empowerment.

[distantlaughter]

‘I want to do something significant’: ex-F1 champion Nico Rosberg on his sustainable entrepreneurship

originally published by Joanna Partridge for The Guardian 13 June 2023 (x)

The former elite driver has changed lanes from fossil-fuel-guzzling track cars to green investing and environmentally friendly racing.

In a parallel world, former Formula One world champion Nico Rosberg could be sitting at home in Monaco with his feet up, having set himself up for life, all before the tender age of 32.

After clinching the world championship in 2016, beating his rival Lewis Hamilton in the process, Rosberg shocked the world of motor sport by promptly quitting the pursuit that had been his life since starting competitive racing at the age of six.

Like many sports stars who retire relatively early, he has moved into punditry, commentating for Sky, but unusually he also appears to have effortlessly switched lanes from professional sportsman to entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist.

Sipping sparkling water in a hotel overlooking Hyde Park, the German-Finnish former champion has “got used” to talking about his retirement, despite being just 37. “I am so incredibly lucky,” he admits. “Thanks to the racing, I have financial freedom and I can do whatever I want.”

Despite sporting a tan, relaxed expression and understated navy clothing, Rosberg reveals a glimpse of a sportsman’s inner drive when he explains his motivation: “I want to do something significant, I want to contribute and I want to grow.

“I was always inspired by people who took that entrepreneurial path, investing to support or create something.” He rules out a return to racing, stressing he wants to use “the legacy of that, for my new endeavours”.

Rosberg now employs 15 people to work on his business and investment affairs, and his new endeavours include brand ambassador roles for German energy company EnBW – where he is the face of its electric charging network – and logistics provider Jungheinrich, but he describes himself on professional networking site LinkedIn as a “sustainability entrepreneur and angel investor”.

Rosberg has previously spoken about how he only gained a broader perspective on life after stepping off the international Formula One merry-go-round. Perhaps surprisingly, given his background in a fossil-fuel-guzzling sport, Rosberg now speaks with the zeal of a convert about sustainability and the importance of drawing attention to the climate crisis, something he admits he gave little thought to during his racing career.

This passion led him to found the Greentech festival, along with engineers and entrepreneurs Marco Voigt and Sven Krüger, in 2019. This year’s conference starts on Wednesday in Berlin, and the event is described by the organisers as a “global platform for pioneering and sustainable ideas”.

Rosberg says his wealth has afforded him the luxury to focus on these new interests, including investing in sustainability-focused startups, while also creating an endowment for his “grandchildren” (he and his wife’s two children are seven and five).

Indeed, one reason for this trip to London was a meeting with charitable foundation the Wellcome Trust, one of the UK’s largest philanthropic investors, known for its track record of impressive financial returns.

Forbes puts Rosberg’s net worth at just over $20m (£16m), although this seems a conservative estimate, given the earning power of the world’s elite racing drivers. He admits to having “software” that provides him with an exact figure, but will not be drawn on what that is, other than adding: “The top F1 driver earns $40m a year.”

Another of his ventures presumably comes with the need for deep pockets: He owns Rosberg X Racing, a team in the new environmentally conscious motor sport Extreme E. Now in its third season, the series sees electric off-road SUVs race in different locations around the globe that have been affected by the climate crisis.

The teams, each comprising a male and a female driver, are racing this season across five locations, from Saudi Arabia to Scotland, and Italy to the Americas. In an effort to limit their environmental impact, the series’ vehicles, logistics equipment and infrastructure are shipped, rather than flown, around the world aboard the St Helena, a former Royal Mail ship. The races are televised, but take place without spectators.

Rosberg’s team, now third in the standings, is sponsored by IG Prime, a division of financial brokerage IG, among others, and is considered an evolution of Team Rosberg, the motor sport outfit founded in the 1990s by his father, Keke. Other Extreme E team founders include Hamilton and former British Formula One driver Jenson Button.

The series claimed a global audience of 135 million in 2022, more than 30% up on viewership during its inaugural season. However, this pales into insignificance compared with Formula One, riding high and growing its fanbase, especially in the US.

Rosberg hopes Extreme E entertains viewers, while getting them to “do their part, and contribute, and think about their own lives” amid the climate crisis.

Rosberg says his own car is an all-electric Audi e-tron, extolling the virtues of the charging network in mainland Europe – and says he does not “like it any more” if he is collected by a fossil fuel-powered car when travelling abroad. He also says he takes the train in Germany, but skirts over whether he flies by private jet.

His focus on sustainability extends to his investment portfolio, which does not contain any oil, tobacco or defence companies. However, he is at something of a loss to explain the involvement in Extreme E of Saudi Arabia, which hosted the first race of the season, but is also the world’s biggest producer of fossil fuels, and home to the world’s biggest oil company, Saudi Aramco, which is 95% government-owned. “I would understand that there are some people, where it doesn’t sit too well with them,” Rosberg says. “All our partners in Extreme E are allowing us to do a lot of good, which we are very grateful for.

“Sometimes you need to go out there a little bit to do a lot of good.”

After the regimented existence of his early years, where his job determined his timetable, Rosberg clearly relishes being his own boss. He vociferously rules out a future return to Formula One, whether as a driver or running a team: “Never, ever, ever, because I value my freedom,” he says. “It was very intense.”

Rosberg still watches all the Formula One races but confesses the experience is not relaxing: “When the lights go off, I imagine I’m there.”

Few would imagine that investing could produce the same high, but he insists he has other ways to get his adrenaline fix: “In business, and on the tennis court.”

CV

Age: 37

Family: Married, with two young children

Education: International School of Monaco

Pay: Undisclosed. “My income comes from representing brands, I am the face of the biggest electric [vehicle] charging infrastructure in Germany from EnBW, and Jungheinrich, the logistics mobility provider. That is one important source of income for me.” He says his income comes from representing brands, his investments in startups yet to deliver significant returns.

Last holiday: Ibiza, where his family has a holiday home and owns an ice-cream parlour. “It’s our favourite place to go.”

Best advice he’s been given: “My father said: ‘You always meet twice in life.’”

Biggest career mistake: “Investing into a great idea, but where the founders were not 100% convincing.”

Word he overuses: “Big bang,” according to his assistant Lena. He adds: “We talk about building reputation … I like to think in ‘big bang’ stories, such as winning the Extreme E championship.”

How he relaxes: Playing tennis; “I am average good.”

[vampiricgf]

I keep seeing a concerning amount of videos of people going "why are we even boycotting starbucks" "the starbucks boycott is stupid" and really they're just exposing themselves for not doing adequate research on a movement they chose to participate in

like it is not the fault of protestors or movement organizers that you choose not to investigate on your own, especially at a time when misinfo is rampant across all platforms and we know we cannot take things at face value anymore. and there's zero excuse when you're filming a video on a phone that has search function capabilities you don't even need a desktop or a laptop to find that information if you're really committed to looking for it

there's also a lot of people saying boycotts are performative activism when that is, historically, not true. boycotts, at their core, are meant to be strategic that is why organizations like bds publish lists specifying where people should focus the bulk of their attention and as we've seen with mcdonald's boycotting does have a significant impact because they have suffered massive, massive earnings losses since it began. a boycott is intentional action, it's not simply a moral stance

and I've seen people confused because starbucks does not have stores in israel but that is not the point and has never been the point. Howard Schultz, the largest private investor for starbucks as well as the former CEO, is a well documented zionist and has even invested in cyber security startups located in israel. his investments alone call into question starbucks' standing on zionism and their private support of isreal. then there is the union busting, that has been extremely well documented over just the last ten years alone. and finally, bds did not specifically target starbucks initially but gave their support to the boycott later, they did not call for that boycott to start with

but you would know that if you did even cursory research into the boycott in the first place

[titleknown]

Robomaus wrote this disquieting vision of a possible future, shared with permission, where the anti-AI art push "wins" that I think any anti-AI folks should take pause over, if only because it's one where nobody wins except the megacorps:

2023-2024: An unknown number of challengers hop on the bandwagon of suing a handful of AI companies publishing open-source (er, relatively) models and software. Their PR campaign is centered around the abuses of closed platforms such as OpenAI, and continued reliance on public technical misunderstandings.

2025: Butterick, Getty, or some unknown challenger wins the lawsuit. Styles are now copyrightable or "infringeable" in some form, and all input has to be licensed before being used in a model that has any potential of being used for profit in any form whatsoever. Research on generative models continues in a handful of European universities where data mining is still legal for purely academic purposes. After additional lobbying, the USCO decision is reversed, allowing for AI-generated works to be copyrighted by the prompter.

2026: Midjourney disappears into the night. Stability AI declares bankruptcy. OpenAI is able to pay their legal fees by a bailout from Elon Musk and Peter Thiel-types after a public shift to "anti-wokeism", but will never live up to the "open" standard or publish any models, or access to them. Emad becomes an angel investor and technical advisor for Drawful (no relation to the game), an AI-generated licensed art startup.

2027: DeviantArt is bought by ArtStation and is now an archive and source for additional ad revenue. If they haven't been already, Midjourney's model-training techniques are leaked. Models are widely shared on pirate sites with names such as www27.notavirus.modelputlocker.ru. Since Automatic1111's webui doesn't actually contain any models, it's left up for research purposes, or easily downloadable. However, most AI research is now moved in house by new divisions of major publishing companies, who are now also lobbying to have access to consumer GPUs restricted.

2028: Drawful and Soundful are now in open beta, if they haven't been already! Now you can make art in the style your favorite artists for only $30 a month; however, any art you prompt, in addition to any derivative work you make from the art you prompt, is owned by the service. Licensing costs extra.

Although they make it easy to train your own model by uploading a folder of your own work, artists get paid a fraction of a cent per generation on these sites, decided by a mixture of nearest-match reverse CLIP search, and a dropdown menu suggesting "popular styles" such as classic Disney, Pixar, and whatever limited-time offer corporate crossover event is currently happening. Signing away your right to be trained on is common practice in the industry. When you sign away your right, you also sign away the rights to all works created by fine-tuning a model on your work. The "most liked" works on the site have a chance to be re-recorded by the artist, with no credit whatsoever to the prompter. After all, they only came up with the idea and happened to like what came out of the AI; anyone can do that.

The scary part of this is, the ideas don't come out of nowhere, according to the author, this is directly based on what happened with Napster, Facebook and Spotify.

Which I think any artists cheering on the idea of applying a Spotify model to AI art should take pause over...

[nytech]

Celebrating Black History Month: Dionne (Wilson) Gumbs

This Black History Month, NYTA recognizes and celebrates the many incredible black men, women and non-binary individuals who have graced our stage at NY Tech Meetups to present and demo transformative tech; shared subject matter expertise during Forum events to provide perspective and participated in Founder Spotlights to tell their story and inspire other founders as they pursue their own journey of building a business. Next, we recognize and celebrate Dionne (Wilson) Gumbs, Founder & CEO, GenEQTY, an innovative data platform empowering financial providers and innovators with data tools and insights to build better products and services for the world’s small-medium-sized businesses.

About Dionne Gumbs

Dionne is a growth-centric visionary with deep domain expertise in financial services along with direct functional expertise and outstanding results in sales, product management, and strategy, and a passion for social impact.

Dionne Gumbs is Founder and CEO, GenEQTY in Minneapolis, a company incorporated in 2018. GenEQTY is Dionne’s second venture. In 2013, she co-founded Wealthrive, a digital fintech startup focused on advancing women as investors. As CEO of GenEQTY, her entrepreneurial instincts and clarity of vision have positioned her to stand at the forefront of fast-moving financial innovations.

About GenEQTY

GenEQTY is a financial data platform that helps innovators and companies convert raw business data, typically siloed and hard to mine, into meaningful insights through a suite of APls. Its actionable intelligence tools help analyze key aspects of a business customer's profile, empowering providers with crucial information they need for better decision-making, developing new products and enhancing the business customer experience. Their mission is to empower financial providers to deliver tools, capital, and advice that help SMB create immesuarable impact, leading to the unbinding of finannce with secure, insightful data.

Several ways you can recognize and help and her team:

Visit their website and learn about GenEQTY

Refer GenEQTY to other companies looking for data tools and insights

Watch and listen to ‘s story on NYTA’s YouTube Channel

[solarpunkbusiness]

 Our “snapshots” are brief, structured case studies that give a taste of the many diverse ways that startups have been trying to grow into community ownership and governance, albeit with mixed results.

The snapshots range from my Colorado neighbors Namaste Solar and Trident bookstore, which converted to employee ownership, to major open-source software projects like Debian and Python, which are mini-democracies accountable to their developers. There is NIO, a Chinese electric car company whose founder set aside a chunk of stock for car-buyers, and Defector Media, a co-op founded by employees who quit their previous job in protest. There are also blockchain-based efforts, like Gitcoin and SongADAO, that have tried to make good on a new technology’s often-betrayed promises for making a more inclusive economy.

I have taken two main lessons from these snapshots so far.

1. There is widespread craving for a better kind of exit—and the creativity to back it up. Entrepreneurs, investors, users, and workers alike are all recognizing the need for a new approach, and they are trying lots of different ways to get it. They are relying on old technology and the latest innovations. They are using many different legal structures and techniques for empowering communities. The resourcefulness is pretty astonishing, really.

2. Better exits need to be easier—and this will require structural change. In just about every case, E2C attempts have faced profound challenges. They are often working at the very edge of what the law allows, because many of our laws were written to serve profit-seeking investors, not communities. Much of what communities wanted was simply not possible. Truly changing the landscape of exits will mean policy change that takes communities seriously as sources of innovation and accountability.

I want to stress this second point. It first became clear to me when working with collaborators at Zebras Unite on the idea of turning Meetup into a user-owned cooperative. The founder wanted it. The business model made perfect sense—a rare platform whose users actually pay for it. The company was up for a fire sale. But we simply could not find investors or lenders prepared to back a deal like that. This is a problem I have seen with many other co-op efforts, over and over. Policy is the most powerful shaping force for where capital can aggregate, and there is no adequate policy to support capital for large-scale community ownership. This is also the reason we have lost many community-owned companies in recent years, from New Belgium Brewing to Mountain Equipment Co-op—the most successful community-owned companies too often can’t access the capital they need to flourish.

[joyxjwang]

How to build brand mythology for D2C brands?

In my VC career before Sloan, investing in D2C was an investment thesis for many VC investors. The driving powers of that trend include the high flexibility in manufacture, the slow innovation in product design from the incumbents, and the booming social media and efficient digital marketing allowing new brands to accumulate customers with less resources.

I have made several investments in this field, and looking at their growth trajectory, I still have confusion about how can those new brands build mythology via what kind of communications with the customers. I raise this question because, as startups, most of the energy from the founding teams and the capital are allocated to the product design and manufacture and the digital marketing to drive sales and customer base growth. And the digital marketing channels for the e-commerce merchants are mainly Amazon and social media such as Tiktok and Facebook. Amazon is such a pain for them because the platform recommend mechanism doesn't help with the building of brand mythology at all. The differentiators of brands are not easy to stand out and only the price and some reviews are helpful for moving the needle. And for media like Tiktok, the marketing related videos have to attract audience attention within seconds, which is also not an effective way of the communication of brands with their target customers.

With all the frustration, most of the D2C brands are just focusing on selling, without knowing much about what does the customers profile look like and their behaviors especially in retention and churn rate, as well as the reasons behind. Most of the startups are hanging there as they still are able to drive the sales growth, but very few of them have built any brand equity. To put it in a very straight forward way, if they increase price to somewhere higher than the incumbents' comparable products, a great portion of the customers will go back to the latter very fast. During our discussion with the founders, I suggested them increase exposure in the offline, brick and mortar stores, which I believe is a way to increase the touch points and communication opportunity with the customers. But in markets like China, their target customers are making most of their purchasing online, and the costs in the offline channels are even higher than the online channels. Therefore, most of the D2C model companies are struggling, leaving investors like me doubting if they even have a brand. How should new comers in the market to build their brands, mitigating through the digital world?