Investing in startups has always been restricted to large venture capitals or professional investors, who are able to assess the profitability of the company and invest substantial amounts of money into it. FindFunds.pl is the first investment marketplace in Poland that allows individuals participate in equity crowdfunding and acquire shares in dynamically developing startups.
Lucyna Warda, the CEO of FindFunds, has ten years of experience in corporate services for companies, including public companies. She has been dealing with new technologies and worked in the startup environment since the beginning of her professional career. For the last few years, she has been popularizing equity crowdfunding while co-creating the GetFunded.pl platform.
“I have always been fascinated by running my own business. I couldn’t imagine myself working in a corporation, by someone else’s rules,” explained Lucyna Warda. “I had the opportunity to launch a project of my own in 2015 when I became a member of a team developing a fundraising platform GetFunded.pl. I felt we are doing something truly innovative!”
For Warda, FindFunds was a natural extension of that project. This equity crowdfunding platform functions as a meeting point for dynamically evolving companies and private investors. Until now, investing in early-stage startups was difficult and reserved for professional investors, such as venture capital funds. FindFunds provides an alternative – a space for startups to present their solutions and obtain funding in return for equity. Such a crowdfunding campaign model allows the startup to reach multiple investors in a short time period and verifies the company’s business model.
The platform gives individual investors a possibility to quickly and effortlessly browse through offers of early-stage startups and invest in a diverse portfolio of innovative companies. On the other hand, venture capital institutions can estimate the market value of a startup by observing the investment process and make better-informed decisions.
“The factor that distinguishes us from others is our approach to crowdfunding as a form of investing in high-potential companies at an early stage. The platform presents verified opportunities to the investors, giving them a chance to make more profit on the startups’ development. I would like FindFunds.pl to be the Polish business crowdfunding platform – a place where everyone can support “homegrown” businesses which are extraordinary thanks to their team, product, or vision,” said Warda.
FindFunds puts special emphasis on educating the market about equity crowdfunding, as this form of investment is not popular in Poland so far. They plan to cooperate with both investors and startups, participate in acceleration programs, organize their own events, and run a blog dedicated to this topic.
Any startup that wants to be featured on FindFunds.pl must fulfill a few criteria. It needs to have the legal form of a limited liability company (spółka z.o.o.). It is also required to have a finished product, first customers, and a plan for further development and scaling up. The information that they need to include is also the form and time of the expected capital exit.
