Kupchiy's Community Update w/ clickable prototype
Dear industry colleagues, Kupchiy supporters, and old friends,
As you might know, Kupchiy aims to make a dent in the chronic lack of capital access experienced by small businesses (SB). As a recession looms over the US, SBs will need financial support from their communities to survive.?
Yet, using?SEC’s Regulation Crowdfunding?is not a viable option for most SBs today - the process is too complex & costly. In 2021, 10.5 million US SBs applied for financing from various institutions. In the same year, there were only 562 investment crowdfunding campaigns - most of these were tech startups, not true local small businesses.
Investment Crowdfunding should become a key capital access tool for SBs. Yet, using SEC’s Regulation is not a viable option for most of them today. In 2021, 10.5 million US SBs applied for at least one other form of financing. In the same year, there were only 562 investment crowdfunding campaigns - most of these were tech startups, not true small businesses.
Our objective is to create a web application for SBs that makes it easy & affordable to plan, prepare, and execute investment crowdfunding campaigns, and to communicate with investors afterward. Some tangible recent steps we’ve taken towards this:
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September 12,?Joshua McSorley?agreed to join the team as a co-founder and Chief Product Officer. With over five years of experience working as the lead designer at a rapid-growth startup in the cloud tech industry. Josh has been leading the team on several fronts to coordinate operations, software development, and marketing: in addition to designing the Kupchiy prototype.
October 2, we finalized our first partnership agreement with?Assurely. This is huge news for Kupchiy. Assurely is the only insurance service that covers issuers of securities through Regulation Crowdfunding exemption. For this partnership, Assurely will provide Kupchiy customers one of their?steepest discounts?and a stream of revenue for every client serviced. More on that in a future update.
October 20, we hit another milestone when?Nastya Buldakova?joined our team as Chief Marketing Officer. Nastya has hit the ground running, facilitating internal workshops, documenting new strategies, expanding on existing strategies, and researching the market.
Additionally, we have built an initial low-fidelity prototype of our web application that includes several major features as well as sections on upcoming improvements. If you have time, please share your thoughts on the Kupchiy app by?clicking this hyperlink (no login required)?and replying to this email with your thoughts.
The project's short-term goal is to enable 10,000 small businesses to explore crowdfunding by 2024. If this goal seems like something you could get behind - in any way - please let us know.