As part of our software update today, we are excited to announce our affiliate model. The affiliate concept itself is no different to other affiliate marketing programs out there, but what makes our model unique is the way rewards can be calculated in our platform and the opportunities that can come with that.
Grow VC affiliate model details:
- affiliate URL is used in a tweet or blog post that mentions Grow VC service
- startup founder finds Grow VC service via affiliates link and decides to register to our service
- later, founder decides to subscribe for startup profile in Grow VC to get funded
- startup becomes fully funded and goes after their market
- startup is successful and generates profit for investment they got from Grow VC (ROI),
- affiliate who’s link was used for startup to find Grow VC, is paid 1% of the Grow VC’s ownership ROI
This 1% is only calculated from the return on investment that Grow VC may get for it’s ownership and NOT from any other investments that may occur by other parties. That 1% from our investment profits may not sound like much, but think about being the affiliate in the next Google or Facebook and there is no limit on how many startups you an have linked to your affiliate ID.
As you can see from the details above, after we have launched our full featured service, Grow VC will also start doing direct investments to most interesting startups in the service. Full details will be announced on the 15th of this month.
How to get your affiliate URL
All you need to do is sign in (or register for your free account first, if you don’t have account yet). After signing in, go to your “account” -page (previously “settings”) and look for affiliate link section, on top of the right column, where you will be able to activate your personal URL and also see statistics of your affiliate URL’s usage. Details like how many times your link have been clicked and how many cookies have been served.
Any new user that clicks to your affiliate link, will come to Grow VC main page and is given a cookie that include your unique affiliate ID. If the visitor chooses to register to our service, their registration ID is then linked to your affiliate ID, and if that person then subscribes to create a startup profile, again their startup ID is linked to your affiliate ID.
Later on, we will list all of the startups that are connected to your affiliate ID in your “account” -page, under affiliate statistics, so that you know what startups have found their way to Grow VC using your affiliate link.
Using your affiliate link
You can use your affiliate link in your personal emails, twitter tweets, blog post, etc. when you mention Grow VC, but using it for spamming people in any way, is totally prohibited. In case of misuse, your affiliate ID will be suspended and all of your affiliate details will be removed, resulting the loss of previously earned connections.
The old story is that 9 of 10 VC funded companies fail, but the successful one makes so much money that the VC makes money. Of course, VC’s are very different from each other, but generally VC’s focus on firms that can make something disruptive and have a huge upside. Another end is small companies that have very limited risk (e.g. local coffee shop, or consulting business), and those companies can get bank loans. But there is a large gap between these two ends. A lot of companies can grow nicely, start to make profit, maybe never make IPO or be acquired by Google or TimeWarner, but can still bring a nice return to investors.
