I dropped Sean Wise an email today about Vencorps.com and he said that they would be making some announcements at the end of this month, but it appears that David Crow has beat me to the punch on writing about it.
VenCorps is a collaboration that includes the software and experience of Cambrian house, but with a focus on providing capital and guidance to entrepreneurs. Cambrian house has been successful using their model, which is crowd-sourced software, and there would absolutely be no better partner out there for building something like this, so that is certainly a good start.
The model basically involves your idea being vetted by the public for an initial vote, and it then moves on to a sort of due-diligence process and a more formal vote, where an “elite group” will do the decision making. It’ll take a few viewings to decipher their flash animation, but give it whirl.
VenCorps is a venture capital seed fund leveraging the wisdom and the participation of an elite crowd to build better start-ups. VenCorps enables entrepreneurs and angel investors to act collaboratively using collective knowledge, networks, and experiences.
Does this make sense for startups? Will it get enough attention? Is this a revolution in how companies are funded? I am going to sit tight and wait to see this thing in the wild before I make my own judgments about it.
What about you?
- Would you share your idea with the world in the hopes of getting access to a group of angels?
- Do you see this as potentially different from current angel groups or VCs?
- Will this method be better at picking winners?
Best of luck to Sean and the rest of the team, we will cover this as much as we can as it comes to life. This is innovative and risky – the sort of thing that nobody has tried yet. For that reason alone, I am cheering it on. Somebody has to get out there and give it a shot.
The Toronto tech and community scenes have exploded over the past couple of years. We often hear about successful entrepreneurs or interesting startups but finding the time to attend all of the events and meet interesting people isn’t easy.