Keeping the fun in funding. No-risk organized fun? Logical and organized fun? Berlin-based GroopDoo aims to provide all this and more with its new, secure way of financing group activities. As we all know, activities do not take place before enough people commit and money becomes available. Often the burden of funding group activities falls on a few or even just one person. GroopDoo tries to eliminate this type of risk when planning group activities, an often familiar risk… someone is left to foot the bill, particularly someone who falls into GroupDoo’s well-educated 18 and 25 target group. What we have here is crowd-fun-ding; GroopDoo partnered with Companisto to take its 1.3M€ valued crowd-fun-ding startup platform to the next level. To date, over 88 investors have supported the campaign, garnering more than 23,484 € toward its 100K € goal for 13.33 % equity offered.
“Collecting the necessary money is often difficult and time-consuming for organizers. Moreover, some friends tend to be unreliable or forget to pay their share in time,” according to the campaign. “Consequently, organizers often bear the cost in addition to the effort necessary for organization. Rather than pre-pay the entire amount themselves, activity organizers can now use GroopDoo to ensure financing of the entire activity in a fast and easy fashion and may check at any time how much money their friends have already pledged. After our own survey of 300 people in spring 2015, 9 out of 10 people give up because of the risk of planning and do not even start organizing activities for groups of five or more people unless the activity is an important event (e.g., their own wedding).”
Sound familiar? GroopDoo founder Paul Gumienny decided to tackle this problem with childhood friend cum COO Bergius Janik. The duo aims to provide a solution that eliminates all payment-related problems utilizing its partner PayPal as well as offering a user-friendly planning tool for organizers.
“Our novel model is designed in a way that activities take place only if a sufficient number of participants and the necessary amount of money have been reached,” indicated GroupDoo. “When creating new activities, organizers enter the project details, for instance a minimum number of 10 people and a required total amount of EUR 1,000 for the group activity.”
Currently in its user acquisition phase, GroupDoo plans to segue into its second development stage by summer of 2017 with a goal to reach at least 35,000 users with growth based on organizers inviting via Facebook and email complimented by from GroopDoo’s own client base.
The platform tapped former Bundesliga soccer manager Michael Meier to be a part of the GroopDoo network and to advise its business development, believing that GroopDoo will quickly become a tool for simplifying club-internal organization processes. The site would work well for a younger demographic and for grass roots clubs too: think elementary and high school event planning. For more campaign details and financial information, click here. 57 days remain on the campaign, with the option to extend until 2 February 2017.
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