by: jouko ahvenainen

Grow VC launched the service investment concept in this week. Grow VC is the first global platform for service investment or “sweat equity” opportunities – so experts and investors can invest in startups using man-hours in addition to dollars, and startups can offer partial ownership in return. In practice it means that a startup can look, for example, a lawyer or PR professional and offer ownership to him or her. And experts can offer their services for ownership.

Sweat equity is nothing new. It has been typical for startups to attract people to do some work and also for board and advisor roles and offer them company shares. What is new and unique is to have a global place to find the most suitable experts for a company and the best companies for each expert. If I set up a company in the UK, I might need an expert in the US and India. I can now enter my company details to the Grow VC services and indicate that I look for an expert with a specified profile in the US and India, and offer them 1% ownership. And experts can find globally companies that look for their services.

This is important for early phase companies and especially important in the current economic downturn. It is also important to have an open match-making service for this, otherwise companies and experts know only opportunities from their own networks. And it doesn’t always mean optimal fit, if you just take someone you happen to know. Web and mobile companies are very global nowadays, and they must find the best resources globally.

All you need to do to get started, is to register for free at Grow VC service.

This new feature is one important step for Grow VC to become the leading investment platform for startups globally. We continuously innovate new models for investments and funding. And in near future we can publish more new concepts. We also like to get your feedback and ideas. We are very interested to know, what kind of services could better help you to make investments or find funding.

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About the author

jouko ahvenainen Jouko is a globally active investor and entrepreneur and active at a senior level with many web and mobile enterprises. He is co-founder and chairman at Grow VC, the globally leading startup equity funding market place. He has more than 15 years experience in international business and closed many VC deals, ranging from 150k USD to 15M USD. Starting his first software company at the age of 16, he then held positions at technology firms including Nokia, Capgemini, and Powerwave Technologies Inc. Jouko is co-founder or active in various start-up companies, including Lost in Translations Inc., Enreach Group Inc., Replicon and Xtract. Jouko is a certified advisor for NasdaqOMX Nordic early phase lists.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 4th, 2009 at 11:26 pm and is filed under Business Education, Entrepreneur Inspiration, Private investors, Startup Investors, VC Capital. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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