Crowdfunding: the collective financing revolution in Chile

The following is an article translated from Spanish to English from Asociación de Emprendedores de Chile (The Association of Chilean Entrepreneurs). The original article, published Jan 28, 2014, can be read here.

The current President of the United States, Barack Obama, issued a creative call to his supporters to finance the electoral campaign that brought him to re-election. While in North America donations to political parties are very common, Obama always showed interest in new platforms and technologies. This was how Crowdfunding came to be: a collective financing alternative that seeks to support a creative project through personal donations.

The method is used for the benefit for both parties because, on the one side, we have entrepreneurs that can meet their goals through donated proceeds, while on the other side, we find those who invest, who issue donations in exchange for various rewards.

One of the advantages of crowdfunding is that it democratizes access to capital for development of entrepreneurship. In addition, it manages to give publicity to projects that in the majority of cases would only remain an idea.

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Pewen Collector, Mapuche inspired game, is now available in the App Store

Inspired by their parents business, “Centro Ecológico Alhue Lahuen“, a Mapuche Reserve located in Buin where you can find replicated indigenous plants and other things native to the culture, Fernando Rojas and Ivan Rojas (Studio Pangea co-founders and brothers) launched Pewen Collector. Their latest venture synergizes their inherited expertise in the subject along with their expertise in game design and teaching in schools.

A few months ago, Studio Pangea applied to Idea.me (the Kickstarter of LatAm) with the purpose to crowdfund this educational game. To their excitement, they were the first Chilean project being funded at Idea.me and they received a total of US$5,025 in funding by 38 supporters from Latin America. Continue reading

Crowdfunding with Idea.me inspired by MangaCorta.cl

The last half of the century has seen most industries we buy our goods and services from become concentrated in the hands of fewer, larger, often global companies. With this shift, employment has migrated to these companies. At the same time, individual people, regardless of age, socioeconomic status or gender are creating their own ventures to become self-sufficient and fill the voids left by these large businesses. The situation we are currently experiencing is both a global phenomenon and opportunity for any person that enters the marketplace. Continue reading

The History of Crowdfunding

There is a great article on Mashable this week that explains an overview on crowdfunding and explains the difference between all the micro funding types.

In April 2011, I helped Tweet Land Game out of Costa Rica with marketing, media and PR and ultimately to successfully raise the funding they needed to launch their first game ‘Tweet Land Game’ which is the first game in the world to merge tweets with real time game play. They used the popular U.S. crowdfunding program, KickStarter.com, however, in Latin America they have recently launched Idea Me which is a similar concept (offered in Spanish).

Check out The History of Crowdfunding Article