The main question of life, the Universe and all that, or Time to start

"42 ?! Squealed Lunkkuool. “And that's all you can say after seven and a half million years of work?”
“I checked everything very carefully,” the computer said, “and with all certainty I declare that this is the answer.” It seems to me, if you are absolutely honest with you, then the whole point is that you yourself did not know what the question was.
“But this is a great question!” The final question of life, the universe and all that! - almost howled Lunkkuool.
“Yes,” the computer said in the voice of a sufferer, enlightening a round fool. “And what kind of question is this?”

Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

Exactly 42 days ago, the Habr audience found out about us, the collective investment platform VCStart, our blog posted the first post in which we talked about ourselves and about what we started. And most importantly, in it we announced the official launch of our crowdinvesting platform in 42 days. To be honest, the “42” figure didn’t make any sense at all - we just needed six weeks to register a certain number of startups looking for investment on the platform, and then Adams remembered the unforgettable novel. Time went neither fast nor slow, start-ups were registered, investors united in the community, choosing objects for investments, in a word, everything happened as planned. And six weeks passed, and this momentous day came. Fanfare!

Further along the course of the story, it is customary to remind, for which, in fact, we gathered here. If deployed, then the fundraising mechanism on our platform has been described in detail in previous posts ( here and here , for example). In short, in order for young promising IT startups to find the desired financing and please us with their innovative and necessary products, bringing them to mind thanks to the powerful crowd support that we provide them.

What pleases, support already at the stage of work in the pre-launch mode turned out to be really powerful. All these six weeks, we have seen an active influx of new users, both from among the founders of startups, and from a group of potential investors who are already investing in the most vibrant projects.

And this, despite the complete lack of advertising, no one has heard of our project until today, except for the Habrovsk residents, for which many human thanks to you on behalf of all the startups located on VCStart! Of course, Habr is not a simple public, used to trying everything by the teeth, there were questions and skepticism (which also stimulates development), but along with this, there were thousands of registered potential investors, hundreds who posted their startup projects, and the first investments made in them.



Of course, many of the startups that came to us are still damp, some have nothing but the idea, but about a quarter of them are already working and profitable companies offering micro-investors shares in return for co-financing.

At this stage, both start-ups and potential assessments, with a large margin from the rest, are three startups: Cargo Search, LeClick and CartPay. The first two, one might say, forwards, ready-made businesses with their audience. Investments in which are associated with minimal risk and most likely will bring investors quick benefits in the form of increased capitalization and dividends. The element of excitement (will go - will not go) is practically absent here, but there is stability and a certain guarantee of success. The third, on the contrary, is a very young project, currently at the Pre-Seed stage, but very interesting and ambitious.

The leader in this TOP-3, of course, is the information and logistics platform Gruzopoisk, which is a convenient tool for participants in the freight transportation market. The project has been successfully operating for two years, uniting more than 80 thousand registered users. At VCStart, he already managed to collect 13% of the target amount, which in monetary terms is $ 19,012. And this is even before the start of the round of financing. One does not have to be a visionary to predict successful financing with a significant excess of the target amount. And 38 of his investors also realized this.

In second place is the LeClick restaurant reservation service , which we recently wrote about (7% collected) and in third place is the CartPay startup, the smart shopping cart offered by it caused a heated discussion in the comments, and the number of project subscribers in the community on our site in one day after the article was published on Habré reached 64 people.



Of course, these are not all startups worthy of financing, there are much more of them, and we will write about many more in our hublog. In quantitative terms, the intermediate results look like this: moderation has passed and 42 projects are already at the collection stage of the community, they are supported by more than 3,500 investors. A total of $ 41,703 was invested.

The numbers are still pretty modest, but it's not at all about them. There are interesting and necessary projects, and there are thousands of potential investors who are ready to financially support them. The main thing is that we got an answer to the “question of a lifetime” in the context of a single crowdfunding platform, combining startups with a high development potential and middle-class users who are morally mature for investing. The matter remains small - to officially begin. And so, let's begin.

You can buy a stake in any of the startups that interest you on the VCStart collective investment platform . Go!