Dr. Cindy Gordon , CEO SalesChoice, spoke on May 5th at a local Mississauga Board of Trade and Microsoft Sponsored Event on Sales and Digital Marketing: Prospective Platform Technologies. She was joined by Jon Lombardo, Global Creative Strategist, Linked In, Rob Triggs, VP CRM Dynamics, Krista LaReviere, Co-Founder, CEO G-Shift, and Corby Simpson, a Digital Strategist. Details are at :http://web.mbot.com/events/Sales-Digital-Marketing-Prospecting-Platform-Technologies-376/details

 

Highlights of her presentation were:

1. Setting the Stage: 

What do Seven People do Globally? Over 400 Million are Entrepreneurs, and over 2.2 B by 2020 will be freelancing. Over 50% of the Global GDP is made of Small Businesses, and in Canada, it is close to 30%, with 90% of the labour force in Canada working for a Small Business.  Different Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding Models were discussed ranging from Expertise Sourcing, like 99 Designs, to Idea Sourcing (i.e.: My StarbucksIdea), or Crowdfunding Models like: Donations (i.e.: Kickstarter), Reward (Indiegogo), Lending (Kiva), Equity (Crowdcube), etc. 

2. Growth Dynamics

(i)  Global Crowdfunding Market is valued at over $40B and predicted to be over $90B by 2020 (Massolution Report 2015).

(ii)  $9.46B raised in North America in 2014, with 58% of the global funds being raised in the USA.

(iii) Asia in terms of growth is leading, following by South America, and USA. 

(iv) Leading Asia Sites include: Demo Hour, like Kickstarter, and Angel Crunch, the largest equity crowd funding site in China

(vi) Ledning is the most active type of crowd funding and has grown from $522M in 2011 to over $12B in 2015 (i.e.: Sites like Proper, Funding Circle, Upstart)

(vi) Canada – Borrowell is a company to watch

(vi) Top Investment Categories : 1) Business and Entrepreneurship 2.) Social Causes 3.) Film and Performing Arts 4.) Real Estate etc.

(vi) Kickstarter since it was founded in 2009 has generated in the USA over $670M in funding, in Canada YTD over $50M. WWW Kickstarter has fueled over $2B of donation(s) and helped fund over 105,000 successful projects

3.) Canadian Growth

(i) 100% increase since 2014 – now a market valued close to $300M and growing at 100% per year

(ii) Over 525,000 workers employed in the Crowdfunding Market segment in Canada, with over 120 CDN platforms

(iii) Nearly 60% of Canadians are unaware of Crowdfunding and what this movement is

(iv) Companies to watch in Canada are: Fundrazr (Vancouver HQ), FundingPortal, Verafin, LightSpeed, Shopify, SeedUps

Debt Entrants: Lendhing Arch, WealthSimple, Lendified, InvestNextDoor

4.) Equity Crowfunding

As of January 2016, 5 Canadian Security Regulators Harmonized a Multi-laternal Law (Instrument) 45-108 with provinces:

Ontario, Manitoba, Quebec, New Brunswick, and NovaScotia

(i) The Laws enable a retail investor to invest in crowdfunding via a crowdfunding security instrument – a max of $2,500 per investment, with a MAX of $10K to be invested in a calendar year

(ii) For an Accredited Investor, the max is $25,000 per investment with a max of $50,000 in total in a calendar year

(iii) For Permitted Clients (ie: Exempt market dealers, banks, mutual fund dealers) there are no investment limits 

(iv) for an Issuer (ie: Entrepreneur raising funds) – cannot raise more than $1.5M under exemption in a rolling 12 month period, and distribution cannot remain open longer than 90 days

5.) Helpful Learning Sources in Canada

(i) Funding Portal which tracks over 15,000 funding sources (Like Expedia for Funding)

(ii) National Crowdfunding Association (NCFA) – educational events, research reports etc

(iii) CATA (Canadian Largest International Association for IT professionals)

Please click on the link below for the full presentation slides:

The Rise of Crowdfunding: Embracing The Sharing Economy presentation

Conclusion:

Dr. Cindy Gordon, CEO SalesChoice and Board Director of CATA, started the equity crowd funding movement out of her living room when Sherwood Neiss, the change agent leader who brought the JOBS ACT to the White House, and made history in changing the laws in less than 18 months visited her with over 20 leaders across Canada to discuss how to get Canada involved in this change agenda. 5 Years later, with over 100 volunteers working coast to coast, the laws came into effect across Canada with harmonization in 5 of the provinces.

Says, Dr. Cindy Gordon : It has been quite the journey. Crowdfunding is a reflection of our Sharing Economy and provides alternative sources for entrepreneurs to pursue their dreams. With over 50% of our global economy being freelancers, and small businesses – these new ways of connecting, collaborating and sourcing capital, or donations to fuel a dream are growing our economy in new ways – that only 10 years ago did not even exist. As a result billions of economic stimulation is flowing in our continual journey to evolve and improve our way of life. Without community volunteers and lobbying advocacy leadership from organizations like CATA, we would not be stimulating innovation capacity at the rate we are all striving for in Canada. Crowdfunding is a market that time has come and every Canadian business leader needs to embrace these approaches – to stimulate and secure growth in our Shared and Networked Economy.”