Summit to Explore Crowdfunding Hits Auckland This Month

Summit to Explore Crowdfunding Hits Auckland This Month

New Zealand’s second one day event dedicated to crowdfunding – INITIATE - will take place in Auckland on the 27th of March 2015. The only event in New Zealand dedicated to crowdfunding, the INITIATE Summit will explore the rapidly growing phenomenon of crowdfunding, including the recent growth in equity crowdfunding and peer to peer lending.

The sector has taken off with more than $30M raised in New Zealand to date with half of this being raised in the past 12 months. Over $4 million has been raised through equity crowdfunding alone since the first campaign launched just over six months ago. Records are regularly broken in other areas.

“Crowdfunding is attracting a huge amount of interest because it opens up huge opportunities not only for dynamic entrepreneurs but also for people who want to make a difference by supporting projects and causes, ,” say event co-organizers, Kat Jenkins and Simon Clegg.

“The INITIATE Summit is a time to take stock of this phenomenon."

The Summit will look at how crowdfunding is being used for business, as well as social causes and projects such as new products, film, music, and sporting ventures. It will explore crowdfunding in its various forms: donation, rewards, equity and lending, and new areas where its potential is being harnessed.

This one day event will feature a veritable who’s who of NZ crowdfunding. Panellists include:

• Josh Daniell of equity platform Snowball Effect, which has raised $3.5M in equity for companies since it launched last year.

• Will Stewart, equity crowdfunding champion at PledgeMe, New Zealand’s only crowdfunding platform that caters to both equity and rewards-based campaigns.

• Duncan Goss, Head of Institutional Funding at Auckland firm, Harmoney, New Zealand’s first peer to peer (crowd)lending platform.

• Lynne Le Gros, General Manager of the Spark Foundation who run Givealittle, which supports cause based funding and has raised over $20M to date.

• Simon Bowden, Executive Director of the Arts Foundation, who run Boosted, which raises funds for the arts.

International experts Jason Best, who is a world authority in the field, and Barry James will also address the Summit via video link.

“This is an impressive line-up of local and global leaders” enthuses Kat.

The event will also feature New Zealand’s first crowdfunding video awards. Nominations for the video awards are now open, with public voting through the website starting on 16 March.

“It promises to be an engaging and informative day for anyone who wants to learn more about 21st Century finance. In 2012, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology predicted crowdfunding to be ‘one of the Top 10 emerging technologies with the potential to transform the world’ – and that’s rapidly coming true”, says Simon

- ENDS –

Additional Background

Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture through many small donations or investments from a large number of people via the Internet. It is rapidly growing worldwide and is supporting a wave of entrepreneurship. Worldwide about $5.1 Billion is estimated to have been raised in 2014.

The most recent global analysis by UK-based Crowdfunding Centre in May 2014 reports: “Global crowdfunding is growing steadily, more than doubling every sixty days.” and that “A new crowdfunding project is created every 3 minutes, with around 500 new projects created every day."

Full details of the event are available on the event website http://initiatecrowdfunding.com. Tickets are available through Eventbrite, or from the website.

© Scoop Media