A new crowdfunding platform called Lucky Ant launched this month. Their goal is to give small businesses the opportunity to raise capital in a disruptive way. Small businesses are often times strapped for cash and limited to the methods in which they can raise capital. Small businesses account for a majority of jobs created in the economy and they rely on their ability to have an edge in the marketplace, take risks and execute cool projects to make it all happen. In order to do these things though, they need working capital, which can be tough to come by in this economy.
Lucky Ant has created a platform to help small businesses make their dreams come true while enabling members of the community and patrons of the business to become part of the story. Each week, a local small business looking to raise money for a project is featured with their story. Community members vote with their dollars to support local businesses and are rewarded with incentives like free merchandise or special access. Lucky Ant enables consumers to collaborate with their favorite local businesses and invest in their future. It creates a new bond between customers and local businesses that didn’t exist before.
How Lucky Ant Works from Lucky Ant on Vimeo.
In reaction to all the crowdfunding action going on, even the congress is working on The Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act attempting to break down barriers in the law that inhibit grassroots funding efforts by small businesses. There’s a lot of movement going on in the crowdfunding space and lots of passionate people working on creating new and innovative platforms. The core of all these ideas is people. We used to live in a world where we thought you had to be wealthy to invest in businesses. Crowdfunding is changing all of this, democratizing the funding landscape and making it easy for anyone to support anything. We are moving towards a world where communities and people have the power to influence change and make anything happen. Everything starts with one.