Let the Rapidly Growing Crowdfunding Sector Elevate Your Business
Starting a crowdfunding business is now easier than ever with a white label crowdlending platform from Crowdsofts.
VILNIUS, LITHUANIA / ACCESSWIRE / August 9, 2021 / In Given the current FinTech trends, Crowdsofts offers an IT solution for those who want to start a crowdlending business without making large investments in developing an expensive peer-to-peer credit technology, as well as for those who want an automatic and effective Need funding, eliminating the need to reach out to each individual investor individually. The company develops crowdfunding software that provides complete, intelligent end-to-end automation of the entire peer-to-peer lending process. Whether it is loans to individuals, companies or the search for a property, the software is able to handle any type of crowdfunding service. It is flexible and adaptable to almost any business model.
Crowdfunding is a new, technology-driven part of the financial world that is rapidly gaining popularity as it offers entrepreneurs great opportunities to get their business up and running. The current growth rate is a CAGR of 15%. It will continue to evolve as a global phenomenon and triple its market size by 2025.
As traditional sources of corporate finance dwindle, crowdfunding has become a great alternative source for raising capital – if the business idea is great and there is a right plan, many people will be ready to invest in it.
In contrast to applying for a bank loan, which involves a lot of paperwork and high costs of raising the funds, setting up a crowdfunding campaign is also an extremely simple and inexpensive process. Another great thing about crowdfunding is that it poses low risk for investors as the money is raised from a wide variety of individuals.
However, developing a crowdfunding platform requires hiring experienced and expensive programming and security specialists, as well as high-end quality experts who have a broad knowledge of both the technical and financial sectors. On average, companies spend at least 100,000 euros to build a market-ready crowdfunding platform that has basic functions and partial automation. In addition, there are also permits and licenses that must be approved by local institutions in order to start the platform.
The story goes on
The idea of Crowdsofts technology, which has been in development for over 3 years, came from the experience of building a Nordstreet crowdfunding platform from scratch. In addition, the team receives inquiries from new and existing companies who are creating a crowdlending platform or need to automate the financing process of their projects. The platform finances various corporate loans as security for existing real estate. The success of Nordstreet speaks for itself: There were many real estate developers and companies who could easily and quickly raise funds for the implementation of their projects. According to the company statistics, since Nordstreet was founded in 2018, Nordstreet has financed 255 corporate loans, with a total of EUR 18,375,035 granted for projects in 7 countries.
The CEO of North street, Tadas Budrikis, understands that renting out an advanced crowdfunding and crowdlending platform like Crowdsofts would have made it much easier for his team to start their business in terms of manpower, time and money.
“Crowdfunding is a new and effective tool to finance various projects and avoid long and tiresome communication with banks. Experience has shown that it is ten times cheaper to rent the specialized software to start your crowdfunding platform in less than 2 months, ”says Tadas Budrikis.
By outsourcing crowdsofts, an entrepreneur can now concentrate exclusively on sales and marketing activities. Crowdsofts has already been developed with great features to help a business succeed. In addition, the dedicated support team ensures that the software is up-to-date, answers all inquiries about its use promptly and solves any problems that may arise. In addition, Crowdsofts can personalize the look of the software according to the provided design specifications.
In addition, Crowdsofts can also serve as a reliable financial platform for companies in sectors such as green energy, technology, agriculture, SMBs, real estate, art and many others. Almost every company can benefit from crowdfunding or crowdlending processes, the only question is how to adapt the tools.
About crowdsofts
Crowdsofts offers software that enables intelligent end-to-end automation of the entire crowdfunding process. It can offer crowdfunding on an equity and / or credit basis. The platform complies with European KYC and AML regulations. The most advanced technology that is easy to use, inexpensive, time saving and will help you fundraise easily.
Via Nordstreet
North street is a crowdfunding platform. Crowdfunding is a model of investing and raising funds in which investments are made by many individuals. This type of financing opens up the possibility of investing in business loans selected by professionals. Anyone can invest the desired amount of money in already selected corporate loans from as little as 100 euros. The Nordstreet crowdfunding platform finances various corporate loans through mortgage loans from existing real estate or other assets. This is an alternative way to get business loans for small and medium-sized businesses.
contacts
Laura K. Inamedinova
PR officer from LKI Consulting
[email protected]
SOURCE: Crowdsofts
View source version on accesswire.com:
https://www.accesswire.com/658915/Crowdsofts-Let-the-Rapidly-Growing-Crowdfunding-Sector-Elevate-Your-Business
How Did I Get My Red-White-Red Card (Austrian Residence) As a Startup Founder
By John H. Shen
“Ok, that was faster than expected.”
I turned to my co-founder, as we just received a congratulations email from my lawyer about my rot-weiss-rot kart getting approved. The time frame from when I applied to when I got the formal approval took just 3 months, which was much faster than the average we have heard before.
Gotta Love That Bureaucracy
Having lived and worked in both New Zealand and China prior, I had to say that Austria is much more difficult and process-heavy compared to NZ, especially for those who were not EU residence. We were very fortunate as we were getting a lot of help from the local agencies such as ABA, VBA and FFG. If you are a startup founder and new to Austria, I recommend look them up!
Then, why Austria? So many people asked us this question, mostly Austrians. I always start the answers by throwing bouquets at the cultural vibrance and my love for the local classical music. It always bring smiles to their faces. I mean it though. Vienna is such an exquisite city, always ranked high in the top 10 liveable cities in the world, many times No. 1.
But for our establishment, a FinTech startup founded in Shanghai China, Austria is our gateway to the limelight of the European market. Furthermore, in comparison to other European countries, the support in the innovation sector in Austria is phenomenal. From the public funding to the supports from the agencies, to the innovative and professional ecosystem. It literally took us much less time to find our first 10 beta B2B customers than to open a company bank account.
Bureaucracy is annoying, but the ecosystem? Awesome!
A Little Bit About Me
I was born in Beijing, China. I went to New Zealand to study as a teenager. Graduated from University of Auckland with BSc - Computer Science in 2006. I worked as software developer, business analyst, then project/product manger. I decided to quit my job in the year 2015, to go full-time in entrepreneurship.
The first few ideas did’t work so well, no surprise there though. Then I met my co-founders in China in 2016. In that very year, I went back to Shanghai, China, to work with the team on the new business, Xencio. 16 years after living in New Zealand.
Xencio China offers corporate treasury automation via AI powered financial intelligence. We sell to many global corporates such as Unilever, Merck, GE, Herbalife, Didi, PingAn China etc. We now have 30 full-time hired hands in China alone.
We felt it is appropriate in 2018 to explore reconnoiter an opportunity to expand to the global market, and that’s when we finally picked Austria as our hub to the EU market.
To Start a Company, You Need Residency
Well, as long as you are not an EU citizen, you cannot really work here, let alone start a company. You can actually cofound a company, but you have to be a shareholder owing less than 50%.
But no worries, there’re 3 ways you could use inorder to obtain the red-white-red card which gives authorization to you to be the managing director, work in your business full time and get medical covers and kids to school just like the locals.
You can find more details from here about the red-white-red card yourself: https://www.migration.gv.at/en/types-of-immigration/permanent-immigration/
The rule of thumb is, for startup founders, 1 is better than 2, which is also better than 3. but 1 is much harder. So if 1 fails, you try 2, and so on. In this post, i will talk about the Startup Founder Category mostly, because that’s the one I did.
Quite self explanatory, if you are young, tertiary level educated with good english and fair amount of accuaintance with work, you should be eliible with a >50 score.
In my case, I got total 60
20 - A university degree (not from Austria)
10 - Work Experience more than 5 years
20 - English C2
10 - Additional Investment of €50,000, and
10 - Selected to a business incubator in Vienna
I just turned 35 when i applied, too bad I couldn’t get the additional 10 point for age (yeah that age up to 35 means it does not include 35, grrr!!).
A Lil Hurdle to Get You Started - Frist Chicken and Egg
Ok, so far so good right? Here comes the fun part:
If you want your application likely to succeed (which you definitely want, right?), you had better have a company already registered. Wait a minute, didn’t I mention earlier you need residency to be the managing director of a GmbH? Exactly! So here you go:
Company <--Dependency--> Director having citizenship or residency
There’re only two possible ways of tackling this:
1. To apply for red-white-red without having a company (and risking getting rejected), or
2. To form a company without having residence (the company formation will come to a halt at some stage, but regardless). We chose the second one.
(actually there is a whole lot to talk about with company formation for non-EU citizens, I will write another blog about it.)
Document Preparation
While the company formation is underway for me, I started to prepare my list of documents.
Let’s start with the easy and pettifogging ones:
1. Passport and photocopies of passport
2. EU Sized Passport Photos
3. TOFEL Certificates to show sufficient language level (if your citizenship is not from a native German or English speaking countries)
4. Proof of Business Incubator - If you already in one, this is money for old rope. But if you are looking at a foreign friendly incubators to get into, here are some quick recommendations, google them: Global Incubator Network, Vienna Startup Package, Elevate by TheVentury, INiTS, weXelerate, ElevatorLab
5. Proof of Fund - for my case, i need to show a bank statement of more than 25.000 EUR. I also had to show that the new company bank account (Xencio GmbH) has over 50.000 EUR.
Then the slightly more complicated ones:
6. Work Certificates - to show your pertinent work experiences. I literally emailed or LinkedIn messaged all my ex-managers or HR department of my former companies, they were very corporative. Because mine is all from NZ, thus did not need translation into English. Yes English is ample enough for it.
7. New Company Related Files - As company formation was not fully completed, I just submitted all the documents or evidence as could provide. This shows the authority that you are resolute with starting a company, not just saying you would.
8. Business Plan - I will going to a bit more details later about it. you can message me directly to get a business plan for Xencio GmbH which we have submitted for my application.
Comparatively more challenging, these documents need apostille:
(I have documents from NZ and China both needing apostille, I found the one from China to be much harder. Simply because NZ has an E-apostille system, if your home country has it, you’re in luck! For my Chinese files, they need to be translated, notarised and diplomatically apostilled)
9. Marriage Certificate
10. Criminal / Police Record
11. Birth Certificate
12. University Degrees and Transcripts - After being apostilled, your degrees need to be verified with ENIC NARIC Austria, this copy needs to be in your document too.
Ok this last one is ridiculous:
13. The proof of residential address in Austria
Yes! You heard right! You Need A Residential Address - The Second Chicken and Egg
You see, the fact you had to show proof of address as part of your residency application is simply absurd, says the former Minister of Digital and Economical Affairs (https://investaustria.at/en/news/2019/03/red-white-red-card.php).
What if your application got rejected? What if (and it definitely will be) things gets impeded even after you got approved? Anyway, the only way to maneuver around it is to sign with explicit short to medium term accomodation mainstay or get some local friends who has properties to assist you with. I don’t really want to do any advertisement here, just message me if you want to know the list of these accomodations providers.
Business Plan, Do's and Don't's
You are an entrepreneur, you know what a good business plan should include. You know, the basics such as:
- Executive Summary
- The Problem - Solution - Benefits
- Product / Service Description
- Market Analysis
- Business Development Plan
- Competitor Analysis
- Financial Planning
As mentioned earlier, please message me to get a copy of our submitted business plan as reference.
Additional to a good startup business plan, there’re a few more things the authority are looking for:
1. Micro-economical Benefit - Local employment - so you need to show how your company is going to hire more people in the next 2-3 years. As a startup you need to consider this and make plans for it.
2. Micro-economical Benefit - Concerning Disruption - this one is a little bit counterintuitive. For the authority, If your business is to provide more job opportunities or bring more money to Austria, well that’s just awesome! But if it’s a type of disruption that it simply moves customer from the competitor to you, then it is not considered economically beneficial. This is a fine line though, ideas like uber or airbnb can in theory considered having no micro-economical significance, in subject to how you frame it in your plan. This could be quite tasking
3. Technological innovation - similar to the governmental grants, there is a huge emphasis on technological innovation. The goal is to land more IPs in Austria. In your business plan, the touch on business development and marketing is important, but it cannot be all it is to your business.
Ready Now? Let’s Submit It!
If you are lucky enough to be from one of the >90 days visa-free countries. You can actually submit your application in Austria.
For me, applying via a Chinese Passport, even I was in Vienna on a business purpose visa, I had to submit it in China. This makes a huge difference and added additional 1-2 months of diplomatic courier transfer (YES, THAT LONG).
What Happens After Submission?
The MA35 will do an initial mild check of your documents for sufficiency. Then it will be forwarded to the labour department - AMS. Your case would then be presented and discussed over a jury meeting (this is why the do’s and don’t’s are very important). The jury meeting is the ultimate determination of whether your case is successful or not. It takes up to 8 weeks for a decision to be made by the labour department.
A notice from the MA35 will be issued that your application is approved, then there will just be more waiting for MA35 to check in detail of all the documents provided.
Hooray, It’s Approved, Then What?
Again, if you are lucky enough to have a passport that grants you Schengen 90 days visa-free, your red white red card should be ready for collection. For me, unfortunately, I needed to fly back to China again (even though I was in Vienna with a business purpose visa at the time of approval), to apply for a Visa-D so that I could come back to Vienna to collect my red-white-red.
Ok ok, no more complaining, with all that being done, I finally made it back to Vienna. Picked up the card and business is good to go, hooray!!
Business just started, More challenges Awaits
As I often say to may others, bureaucracy is challenging, doing business is much harder! In my next few blogs, I would like to share more about our journey with hiring, tax, social security, getting the grants, as well as living here as an English speaker (getting the drivers license, kids to kindergarten / school, and renting / buying a house). This is just my first blog.
Feel free to contact me directly (linkedin.com/in/johntheshen). If you got any more questions. See you in my next blog!
Disclaimer: Information provided in this article does not serve as legal advice of any kind. If you have a particular question regarding the red-white-red card, please consult an immigration lawyer. For the most up-to-date information, please refer to https://www.migration.gv.at/en
Did you know that bank spending on new technologies were about to reach 17 billion U.S. dollars in North America in the year 2015 and increased to 19.9 billion in 2017?
The global venture capital investment in FinTech companies is increasing rapidly.
How?
The term FinTech is used to describe innovative start-ups that provide a modern technological solution to financial companies. The reason behind its huge success is totally dependent on its growth in individual markets such as savings, investments, and loans, which differ greatly.
Despite having a host of FinTech applications and industry subsections, FinTech remained out of the spotlight while bitcoin and cryptocurrency were dominating the headlines. The reason being FinTech was still in its initial growth phase. Nonetheless, in the next few years, FinTech applications and products will be developed in a more advanced way and going to gain popularity. Not only because their usage will help people in making cross border remittances, but will also increase the data points used in making automated regulatory functions and loan decisions.
The FinTech projects are at their boom and are expanding greatly over the past few years. Several FinTech subcategories have already been adopted by sectors like insurance and regulation. They have started using machine learning to automate claim-related and internal processes.
Let’s discuss in detail the latest trends of FinTech that are going to stay in 2019 and beyond.
1. Mobile Payments Growing on a Global Scale
Although it is predicted that the worldwide volume of mobile payments is going to grow by 60%, still there are countries and some areas with financial exclusion. Financial exclusion refers to the situation where financial services such as banking and payments are not available. Several brick and mortar banks have promised to deliver banking and financial services to such places using mobile banking as the primary source of financial management. It is one of the most convenient ways of connecting people with the current financial system. All they need is a smartphone and internet access to open a traditional bank account. FinTech app development companies, on the other hand, will require different mobile payment solutions to give the industry a layer of security. This will not only help to prevent fraud but also will improve the ability of people to become part of the financial system. Another deployment of 5G technology is soon going to be introduced to become ubiquitous. It reduces the latency and transaction time by handling the number of transactions at a scale.
2. AI and RPA
Solutions using AI and RPA have been introduced in the financial sector by FinTech companies such as anti-money laundering software infused with AI, regulatory reporting, transaction monitoring, and risk management. These companies will continue to grow, and eventually, we will observe the significant return of Investment from FinTech investments.
By the end of 2019, it is predicted that RPA software will be widely used in almost 75% of the financial services. Robotic Process Automation automates repetitive human processes with ease and does not require manual help for the same. Although the implementation of robots is too high and would cost around $40K–$50K per robot, it is better than employing someone who is less efficient and takes more time than cost included to implement a robot.
3. Cloud And Quantum Computing
Cloud and quantum computing is one of the best ways to offer digitization and regulatory compliance with banks and financial institutions. These FinTech services are enabling financial institutions to become more visible and accessible to the end-user. Cloud computing help financial sector to quickly develop new applications, add more online services, and thereby improve customer experience. Also, the integration of complex data analytics has transformed the way financial was being done due to its ability to process large unstructured data effectively.
In 2019 it is expected that the financial sectors will achieve a comprehensive IT architecture on cloud platforms. For that to happen they might require to hire FinTech application developers who can assist them with the latest financial technologies and trends. Along with cloud computing, these sectors will be adopting quantum technology to deliver products o their end consumer in an improved and efficient way.
4. FinTech App Development and Open Bank Concept
Almost 75% of larger banks will be actively engaged in supporting FinTech application development through open banking concept PSD2. FinTech app development companies will have to hire software development services to develop solutions that can widely be used to enhance the efficiency of the sector. Keeping in mind the safety and security of the financial institutes, third-party enrollment will be taken into consideration to maintain customer transaction records and to further utilize the data for creating products.
5. Blockchain Adoption
There is no doubt that blockchain technology is the best and the most helpful FinTech innovation. It is a decentralized digital ledger that ensures that no single user has full access to the critical data. When it comes to FinTech, blockchain ensures efficiency via the elimination of intermediary step, accountability with immutable audit trials, compressing transactions, settlements processes, and avoiding the paperwork with the digital ledger to store all the records. Identification of a person becomes easier with blockchain who is involved in financial transactions such as loaning and investments.
The Bottom Line
FinTech is still an untouched frontier as many of the technologies and paradigms are still in their developmental stages. The financial sector is shifting towards mobile and digital and for that embracing technology is of utmost importance. It not only streamline the processes but also make the system more secure and accurate. So, we need not to wait for longer, the brighter finance is almost around the corner. All you need to do is keep yourself updated about Fintech trends and technologies being launched. This will not only help you to enhance your knowledge but will also help you to grow your financial business effectively. Integration of newer technologies can help in expanding the business and deliver the most appropriate services to the end users.
Ed Donner is the co-founder and chief executive offer at untapt, a talent marketplace that uses proprietary artificial intelligence to connect leading global FinTech and financial services firms with highly-skilled engineers and technology professionals. Ed’s interest in software and technology led him down the path of becoming a developer and leader within the category. His successful career spanned 18 years and across three continents. During his tenure, Ed worked for leading corporations in major business hubs around the world including New York, London, and Tokyo. During his career, Ed has working with Fortune 500 businesses as well as startups. Prior to launching untapt, Ed served as a Managing Director on JPMorgan’s global technology team. In his role, he was responsible for hiring technology talent to grow his team and found it challenging to both find and hire talented, high-caliber developers. It was here that Ed came up with the idea of creating a platform that would give the FinTech industry a better system to recruit the right type of professionals from a pool of the top echelon of candidates. From his own experience, came the need for transforming the FinTech hiring process, for both businesses and candidates. The solution that the FinTech industry strived for became available in 2015 and was named aptly named, untapt.
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