Mr. Wonderful Joins StartEngine

During these difficult times in our country, it is important for us all to stay healthy and do our best to flatten the curve of COVID-19. For entrepreneurs, I also believe that it’s important to stay focused and true to one’s mission. For us at StartEngine, our mission is to help entrepreneurs achieve their dreams. We believe it’s a very noble mission, and during this crisis, it’s no longer a concept, but a necessity. 

During these difficult times in our country, it is important for us all to stay healthy and do our best to flatten the curve of COVID-19. For entrepreneurs, I also believe that it’s important to stay focused and true to one’s mission. For us at StartEngine, our mission is to help entrepreneurs achieve their dreams. We believe it’s a very noble mission, and during this crisis, it’s no longer a concept, but a necessity. 

How Venture Capital Behaves in a Recession Source: TechCrunch

Millions of businesses and entrepreneurs are suffering. Many industries have been forced to close, and companies do not have access to capital. In uncertain times, venture capital firms make fewer new deals and focus on triage and supporting the companies already in their portfolio.

The lack of access to capital is hurting these businesses. Salary cuts, layoffs, shutdowns. All of this happens when companies run out of cash, and this is happening now.

The strength of our economy, and our country, has always been the millions of small businesses that operate within it. I believe that will continue to be true. Big businesses were once small businesses. Think of Facebook and Amazon who have single handedly redefined industries and even the fabric of society. They were once small businesses that needed funding.

Announcing a New Partnership

For StartEngine, our mission has never resonated more than today. This is why I am excited to announce that we have signed a very important partnership agreement with Kevin O’Leary, also known as Mr. Wonderful, to help us reach a whole new level and help even more businesses raise the capital they need to succeed.

Who is Mr. Wonderful?

Kevin O’Leary is a renowned businessman and investor. He founded SoftKey, a computer software company, that he led to a $4B acquisition.

After the acquisition, Kevin eventually found himself on television, quickly becoming a sought-after host and personality on a range of shows – including Discovery’s Project Earth, CBC’s Dragons’ Den, and ABC’s Shark Tank.

Kevin has since launched O’Shares ETFs, O’Leary Fine Wines; and a best-selling book series on financial literacy. In 2014, Kevin founded O’Leary Financial Group – a group of brands and services that share Kevin’s guiding principles of honesty, directness, convenience, and above all, great value.

What is StartEngine’s partnership with Mr. Wonderful?

Kevin O’Leary is now a shareholder of StartEngine and our Strategic Advisor. His relationship with StartEngine is more than a simple paid sponsorship where he will promote our brand to his community. This relationship is also a meeting of two organizations, O’Leary Productions and StartEngine, to further entrepreneurship in our country.

He will be advising us on how to best offer our services to small businesses. He will provide StartEngine exposure to his large community of followers and encourage the portfolio of companies he invested in while on the Shark Tank show to use StartEngine for their funding needs.

Why this partnership matters

With COVID-19 introducing uncertainty and stress into our lives, we believe it’s important to bring positive energy and news to our community of entrepreneurs. We are here to help and give you access to capital.

The traditional sources of capital, from venture capital firms to angel investors, have all but disappeared. Equity crowdfunding is a relatively new option for raising capital, and it is now more important than ever. It may be one of the few funding options left for entrepreneurs, and we want everyone to know about it. Having Mr. Wonderful on our side helps us achieve this goal.

While we are excited about this announcement, we also do not want to downplay what is happening in the world with Coronavirus. We hope that you and your loved ones are safe and that COVID-19 has not greatly upended your life.

Today, StartEngine is a virtual company, and our whole team is working together from home. While we may be remote, that has not changed our resolve and our mission to help entrepreneurs. I have seen our team stay up late at night talking to customers and investors. I have seen them working every day, including the weekend. They care about helping founders, and to me, this is the very definition of commitment.

We are grateful and lucky to be in the position of being an innovative company, but importantly in this time, a digital one. Our business has not been disrupted by Coronavirus, and our entire team is hard at work to launch more offerings and help more entrepreneurs raise capital.

I hope in these difficult times you will receive the news that we are working as hard as we can to help entrepreneurs with comfort. In the last few weeks, we have seen thousands of people on our platform investing their capital in promising businesses.

I will not hide that in the last week we have seen some slowdown in the number of investments, which is natural with the amount of uncertainty created by recent news. However, it is not anything near the disappearing act that venture capital and angel investors perform in times of crisis. They are focused on life and death decisions with their existing portfolios.

While institutional investors look inward, we have been busy launching new companies that are raising capital. I invite you to join the hundreds of companies that are calling StartEngine the source for always raising capital.

You will be hearing from Mr. Wonderful on a regular basis, so keep an eye out. He is planning to launch a series of articles for entrepreneurs in the near future, and he will spread the word about his partnership with StartEngine.

Once this crisis is over we hope the marketplace will recognize that equity crowdfunding is a great source of capital for businesses.

If you are an entrepreneur who needs funding and are interested in learning more about the StartEngine platform, apply here to speak with my team and learn more.