“We’re not gearing up for the equity wave if it comes,” Kickstarter co-founder Perry Chen said in a recent interview with GigaOm. “The real disruption is doing it without equity.”
Fundable disagrees. The startup, which launched Tuesday, plans to take advantage of new crowdfunding laws that make it legal for startups to solicit investments publicly online and accept money from unaccredited investors.
Its website will offer investors two options. The first will be to contribute money in exchange for a product or reward, which is how the process works on Kickstarter. The second will be to back a startup in exchange for an equity stake in it.
Mixing the two models would set Fundable apart from not just Kickstarter, but also CircleUp, another company that plans to create online crowdfunding opportunities in the wake of the new laws, but doesn’t offer a rewards-based fundraising option.
But the company still has a couple of hurdles to clear before it can put both models into place.
Crowdfunding legislation is so new that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) hasn’t set rules for it — it’s required to do so by July 4 — and Fundable needs to be approved by the SEC as a broker/dealer before it can handle investments.
In the meantime, the company is focusing on offering rewards-based deals — which makes it look, for the time being, like a less-populated version of Kickstarter.
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