Live Crowdfunding Event takes off at Technoport

    Listen, if you’re reading ArcticStartup, you’ve got a solid interest in startups. In fact, I bet whenever you see news of funding rounds into companies you believe in, I bet you wish you could also hop on that train to Moneytown (or buy your ticket to learn more about the bankruptcy process!).

    Crowdfunding offers that beautiful opportunity, and now Scandinavians will have a chance to meet, hear, and invest in companies live in Trondheim at Technoport, a three-day tech conference running the 28-30th of April looking to bring together entrepreneurs, investors, researchers, industrialists, and other doers.

    The way the conference and crowdfunding comes together is pretty simple. Companies present themselves up on stage and simultaneously will be selling pre-priced shares through the FundedByMe crowdfunding platform.

    The overall goal here is that startups will gain maximum exposure and be able to speak personally to the crowd that may fund them. And to attendees, if they see a startup that they think they can get behind, then they can put their money where their mouth is. If the startup is successful, further down the line the shareholders will have a right to future profits through dividends.

    “We want to give startups the opportunity to fund innovative ideas using new methods. Technoport is all about experimenting with new ideas to find solutions to problems, in this case how to fund new businesses,” says Gøril Forbord, CEO of Technoport.

    The Technoport organizers are wise to call this more of a crowdfunding experiment as the concept is still so new. This is the second Live crowdfunding event we’ve seen first pop up in the Nordic countries, and it’s easy to picture this event concept will expand to the U.S. as the J.O.B.S. act gets its act together. Previously we’ve covered The City of Helsinki’s Pitch Helsinki event where investors and the crowd got the chance to invest into startup companies through Invesdor.

    The Helsinki event ended up as a success, as PlayMySong ended up receiving 25,000 from 35 investors. PlayMySong was the only company out of the eight to reach its minimum goal, but in total the event moved a total of €43,000 willing to be invested into companies. As the crowd gets more and more educated about crowdfunding, it’s not impossible that the Technoport event will show similar or even better success.

    To apply:
    To pitch your company at the event, you need to be a Norwegian limited company, and make the deadline by February 28th.

    The chosen startup will receive a free campaign on FundedByMe, two delegate passes to Technoport, a stand at the event, and participation in a pitch camp to nail down your pitch. More information can be found here.

    “The response from the Norwegian startup community has been overwhelming, so we are looking forward to seeing the experiment play out,” says Forbord.