By Constantinos Parissis.

An innovative project usually starts, either as an idea on how to better fulfill an existing need, or as an entrepreneur's urge to grasp a business opportunity. StartersFund started as a quest for improving the way that crowdfunding business used to work, but soon it was apparent that the need reflected also a huge demand. The first element led to the solutions employed, the second brought the Angel money needed to start it below the radar.

It was October 2010 when another project I was working on, called Metron CMS, derailed and ran short around 6.000 Euros due to the emerging Greek Crisis. The news of the crowdfunding success of Diaspora made kickstarter.com, the first crowdfunding platform I ever heard of, to seem as the best news in the world! However, kickstarter would not pay out a creator without a US Bank account and it was - and still remains - almost impossible for a foreigner to open a US Bank account (after the US Patriot Act of 2003). At the same time, it did not encourage internet projects and required some committee to filter the pitch by some vague criteria I still haven’t understood.

Research indicated two other solutions that seemed just about right: rockethub.com offered a well designed service and had good traction, while invested.in was small but very promising. On the other hand, indiegogo.com did not seem enough business oriented, so I focused on the first two.

Then, a client and good friend of mine, Antonis Konstantinou came along. Antonis owns international patents for food and beverage production using natural power-foods like Hippophaes, Spirulina and Chlorella, and faced about the same problem: he needed around 20.000 Euros to properly market the invention. Brainstorming was very productive, but there was a problem: Antonis could promise to his supporters fresh juices and candies. For me, there was almost nothing to offer …but shares.

Shares! Great Idea! We will offer shares of our new businesses, along with juices and candies! What could ever be more attractive for a promising new business's pitch, than shares! …But, Nobody offered shares to the day. How was it possible nobody else to have thought of it?

To cut the long story short, when your job as a professional is to help businesses survive the bureaucratic hell of Greece and flourish, no bureaucracy in the world can fear you. It was a matter of around two days to find a legal solution for equity-based crowdfunding in the European Union and around two months to come with a solution compliant with current US-SEC rules that prevent equity-based crowdfunding in the US. I discussed the solution with prominent Greek and American lawyers, validated the assumptions and StartersFund was born!

So, what StartersFund does differently is that it firstly combines the two most common models, so as a project to be as attractive as possible: a creator may offer end-products and services along with shares. The challenge to do that lawfully was huge, but the result is already quite satisfactory: StartersFund is the only equity-based crowdfunding platform to the day that has been granted a state approval (by Cyprus SEC, where the company running it is situated, while an extensive notification has also been submitted to Central Bank of Cyprus).

An application to US-SEC will soon follow, so as StartersFund to be also the first equity-based crowdfunding platform to operate on both sides of the Atlantic, while a separate, local service for the UK is also underway.

Nonetheless, the way it was used to be done, equity crowdfunding suffered from a very important handicap: the entrepreneur and the investor were left alone to close the deal. To us, Do-It-Yourself is just not acceptable when it comes to equity-based crowdfunding. So, unlike other platforms that only offer safekeeping of the funds and transferring them to the creators, StartersFund is an all-inclusive service that takes care of everything, i.e. company formation (for new companies), capital formation, shares issuance and transfer, as well as all related processes, even formal company evaluation after two years from funds transfer (w/a). In StartersFund financial supporters will only have to do two things: support a project with funds and click “claim” when they receive a private equity offering, after a campaign’s success. The platform takes care of everything else.

After that, we expanded the scope: why does crowdfunding have to accept only single-person pitches? So, StartersFund accepts not only single persons as crowdfunding campaign initiators, but also teams of individuals and existing companies as well, by a separate process to be introduced in Q1/2012.

And then we added the last feature, that we consider as our most valuable contribution to crowdfunding: based on the notion of a true ecosystem, StartersFund will be the first in the industry to combine crowdfunding with a Virtual Business Incubator, a Business Accelerator and a specialised marketplace, that will also enable the creation of wider crowdsourcing campaigns. The full list of features are estimated to be enabled in Q2/2012, but innovative entrepreneurs can already expect much more than just raising capital. They will be part of an innovation birthplace that will actively support every new business idea flourish, from a funding pitch to a fully-fledged incorporation, backed by a host of all accounting, legal and management support services it will need throughout the company’s early stages, and surrounded by even more experts and lots of side services available online to choose from.

Paul Uza from Lithuania, the best web developer I have ever met, was enthusiast to join the team on March 2011 and Angel investors, mainly from the Greek diaspora, offered the first funds. StartersFund today is the brainchild of more than 15 core members and advisors, including lawyers, economists, web developers and entrepreneurs from Greece, Lithuania, Cyprus, the UK, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the US.

At the beginning, StartersFund will be able only to form and support Cyprus-based companies. New destinations are estimated to be added on a bimonthly basis, so as by the end of 2012 to cover also UK, USA, Germany, France and Spain. Depending on funds availability, we expect to cover all the EU countries, as well as the rest of G20, by the end of 2013.

What we all aim is StartersFund to stand out as the most complete and reliable Crowdfunding platform, the true quality leader in Crowdfunding, from day one.

If we make it, we anticipate to contribute in making Crowdfunding the new mainstream tool for startup funding globally, and StartersFund to be considered as the "Birth Valley" of this new world.

Constantinos Parissis, Chairman, StartersFund

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/costasparissis

Twitter: @CostasParissis | Skype: c.parissis