Crowd funding, Trade Me and Network Externalities
Very exciting news last week that New Zealand’s first two equity crowd funding platforms have been licensed. See PledgeMe’s (henceforth PM) blog announcement here and Snowball Effect’s (henceforth SE) FB announcement here and the FMA’s announcement here.
Exactly what role crowd funded equity will play in NZ is going to be very interesting to watch:
- Will it fill a gap in the market and mean businesses get funding that they otherwise wouldn’t have? or
- Will it merely substitute existing funding channels but provide a ready made army of brand ambassadors for the companies that receive funding?
I imagine it will be some combination of the two, but that’s not what I want to talk about. I wanted to briefly touch on how the market structure for crowd funding platforms might evolve.
We’ve had two licensees accepted and I have read somewhere that there are another two before the FMA (plus one combined peer-to-peer lending/equity crowdfunding platform). The question I have heard a few times is whether we can sustain 5 platforms and if one will rise to the top. In this regard, I have heard TradeMe given as an example that one platform will win out.
I’m not sure this is right.