Meet the women who are #crowd-funding their way to riches

Wedding

By Alley Pascoe, Sunday Style

WHERE do start-ups, charities and artists turn when they need cash? They go to the place we all go for anything now: the internet.

Thanks to sites like ArtistShare, Pozible, Indiegogo and Kickstarter, crowd-funding has been the go-to investment platform for start-ups, and the pool of those requesting our spare cash is growing.

It’s estimated that crowd-funding raised more than $47 billion globally last year. If the trend continues, this year it will overtake venture capital as the largest source of start-up funding.

Scott Pape, the Barefoot Investor, has seen first-hand how “crooked” banks can be and believes “having new sources of funding is a good thing”.

So, why has the web become an alternative to getting a loan or hitting up your parents? “Because people are unable to get finance elsewhere,” says Mr Pape.

It’s also much easier to put out a call on social media than to spend years saving the old-fashioned way. Yet crowd-funding doesn’t make people entitled, insists finance expert Larissa Hamm, and instead “encourages us to think in a more entrepreneurial way”.

Let me share why this is significant: People would still like to have big weddings and many times are not in need of a bunch of gifts. They could get people to help with the wedding instead of asking for gifts or money. The people attending can actually see how their money was spent and feel more a part of the new couples life. After all, they helped get it started! It may seem crass now, however I predict that this will be the norm in a few years. 

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