Seed Equity, founded by an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the year, is launching a U.S. Registered Broker-dealer and online equity-based crowdfunding platform for Startups targeting a global audience. Seed Equity is a member of FINRA and SIPC. Founder Todd Crosland previously started and sold Interbank FX – a company he operated from 2001 to 2011.
Seed Equity claims to already spans the US, Australia, Brazil, China, Denmark, Egypt, Hungary, Israel, Japan, Philippines, Poland, Russian Federation, Romania, Singapore, South Korea, Honduras, Cyprus, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Turkey and United Kingdom. The company is preparing to open an office in Tel Aviv.
Seed Equity sees their launch coming at a time when the startup market is expanding geographically and investment is being diversified through crowdfunding initiatives. The platform allows entrepreneurs to share information about their startup, carry out due diligence processes, apply for funding, and close formal international investment agreements with multiple investors.
“Countries like Israel and Chile have actively been supporting their own startup ecosystems through grants and tax breaks which has spurred a boom of promising startups across the globe,” said founder and CEO Todd Crosland.
Seed Equity points out that hundreds of foreign entrepreneurs continue to move their startups to the US to improve their access to investors who continue to invest mostly in local tech hubs such as San Francisco and New York City.
“This is why we are seeing an increase in equity investment crowdfunding that allow promising foreign entrepreneurs to seek their investments at home,” Crosland adds.
“This trend to seek investment through crowd-funding is much more prevalent abroad, especially in developing tech hubs where the geographical and psychological barriers between the entrepreneur and potential US investors long impeded local startups to push through.”
“Seed Equity was founded to provide growth equity to entrepreneurs whether they are located in San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Bangalore, London, or Shanghai. The company’s mission is to help find the best and brightest entrepreneurs and connect them with global institutional and individual investors,” adds the founder.
The platform “provides investors with greater interaction and transparency with their potential investments. We believe our technology will help assist the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ in the vetting and investing process,” says Crosland.
Crosland stressed that his company provides “one of the first global equity based, social investing platforms that connects startups and growth companies with institutional and individual investors from around the world,” adding that the focus of many prior funding services has been on the US market only.
In order to create the company necessary to make the platform work, Seed Equity is working with Stanford Computer Science graduate Clifton Crosland and a number of leading members of the team that helped grow Interbank FX.
