Meet Emily Mackay from Crowdsurfer – Our Startup of the Week
Every week we’ll publish a 30 second pitch from 12 leading startups from across London. In this series we took the founders to the River Thames, aboard Canary Wharf’s speedboat for the most exciting pitch of their lives.
Searching for gold
Crowdfunding is an attractive option for many startups wanting to raise additional capital, and a great opportunity for investors to find growing startups.
But with so many platforms out there, how do you track them all?
Emily MacKay believes she has the solution – Crowdsurfer, the search engine for crowdfunding for projects.
As an investor, Emily found she was unable to find and compare new opportunities to invest money, and there was little way for startups to find out the success of similar startups on individual platforms.
Becoming the data authority
Crowdsurfer wants to be the Google of crowdfunding.
It brings together all the projects from different platforms including the loans market, microdonations and presents them in a simple platform.
There are over 800 different services in crowd and peer funding available on the net, offering financing in over 60 different countries.
The company have already had thousands of searches from over 60 different countries.
Growing market
Founder Emily told us the industry is continuing to grow:
The crowd and peer finance industry is already a $5bn market and it’s set to reach $100bn by 2018. You can’t search or analyse something that big without an aggregator.
Much like buying shares on the stock market, revenue is made by taking a small proportion of any completed pledges that are found via Crowdsurfer.
Searching the world over
Crowdsurfer is currently self funded but has recently received an innovation grant for an undisclosed sum. They are also actively looking for seed / angel investment with SEIS.
The company has ambitions to go global and become the leading authority linking those seeking investment with those looking to invest in new businesses.