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

3M & ENDEAVOR announce partnership and their vision

Antofogasta, Chile
On April 7th, 2011; 3M launched a Mining Innovation Center in Antofagasta, Chile.

The mining industry currently represents 20% of 3M’s total sales in Chile. That’s why 3M is interested in leading the industry as a provider and doing the research and development that mining companies are going to need in the upcoming years.

Guillermo Ochoa, Managing Director at 3M Chile, said:

the goal of this innovation center is to cover the demand that will come from the mining industry, which will be close to $ 50 billion (US) over the next five years.

In May 2011, a month later, 3M launched their business incubator called “El Ingenio” and they partnered with ENDEAVOR, which is going to work on the detection and evaluation of high potential entrepreneurs related with mining and energy industry. ENDEAVOR’s challenge is to recruit between 3 and 4 projects on a monthly-basis.

The incubator is intended to help 3M reach its next milestone:

In 2016, the company hopes that 40% of their total sales in Chile, will come from products launched over the last 5 years. And from that 40%, the half should come from local projects”

Image Credits: Innovacion.cl / Diario Financiero