Rate this business idea

An app, similar to Tinder, which matches investors with investors or investment projects.

All users are certified, the information is transparent only to a degree which allows to have an understand of what they do. When both parties match, they sign virtually a NDA to prevent stealing of ideas and they meet or discuss the project through the channels offered by the app. 

Would you invest? Any drawbacks (already made, issues, etc.)?

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Honestly, a buddy of mine in b-school had something similar to this as an end-of-year project idea. You may get shit on for it, but I thought it was fuckin' fantastic. I would get rid of the 'swipe' and 'match' terminology/features as I just think it feels "too much like Tinder" and it may denote the seriousness of it. I genuinely actually like the idea, LOL. I had a great idea for a startup app that combines Uber/BNB for parking spot rentals, but as always I was too late and someone already figured out how to do it. 

Side note - I'm not a lawyer, but my brother is so I am often on the receiving ends of many law and legality lectures. I'd find it extremely hard to have an NDA agreement embedded that would actually hold weight, and it would require significant work on the investment end for the seller to display information in such a way that would not give anyone enough information to capitalize on. Even then, it'd be pretty damn hard for the original firm to 'prove' that someone stole their idea with the app so there could be plenty of malicious issues with it. 

I think in order to use the app, you'd have to first sign up and verify that you're a working professional with enough capital to a) invest actual green into any idea that you see fit or b) aren't some high schooler LARPing as Mark Cuban. I think it'd be very hard to pull off successfully but would honestly love to see some shit like this in the future. If you've got a team comprising of some VC guys, software engineers, a couple of lawyers on retainer, and some marketing folks, I say fuck it - launch. Startups are risky and a lot of them are cringe as fuck but hey, you never know. 

 

Investor vetting is relatively easy.  Project vetting is 100x harder. 

What makes this impactical is that a few of these platforms exist and all struggle to solve that problem. 

 

So AngelList for IB/PE type deals? Pretty sure this already exists doesn't it? Maybe just not as well known, so someone else can chime in but this feels like I've already seen this before.

The poster formerly known as theAudiophile. Just turned up to 11, like the stereo.
 

The fact that no one on this website (which would be a part of its core demographic) has heard of it proves there's space

Facebook wasn't the first social media company and Google sure as shit wasn't the first search engine. What matters more than being first is execution

 

This website is a bunch of students, 4chan/reddit incels, interns and banking juniors with a small smattering of anyone who even comes close to doing any kind of origination. Fuck I don't even place myself squarely in the origination bucket. So no, just because the common pool of ignorance here is black hole sized, doesn't mean shit.

It's nice to philosophically say "being first doesn't matter, look at GOOG!". This is a "marketplace" idea where network effect matters. You're welcome to Google those if interested.

 

I think it's a very cool idea, especially because similar platforms exist but I don't know if any are targeted at the average consumer (i.e. all these new "investors" who are suddenly day trading options on Robinhood, buying coins/NFTs, and might be willing to throw $2k at a startup company they like the sound of). The legal/operational side of this business will be difficult for sure. 

In the world of start-ups, you will almost always find that you are not the first one to come up with an idea. That's just the reality. But I think it's a shame to let that fact deter you from launching something that you think might have potential. 

 

Love your second paragraph - so true. When I trade on my personal account I view it the same way - someone in a hedge fund knows a fuck ton more than what I do about this trade, as they have hundreds of different resources for their disposal to get a better read. I think the same goes for a lot of startup ideas. There's seven billion people in this world, if you're having an issue then most likely someone else has had it too, so why wouldn't someone have already capitalized on it?

But letting that deter folks is definitely not the way to go. I feel at the end of the day, the next Uber or ABNB or Square founder may not even be the original idea-holder, they just may be the one that knows how to capitalize on it the best. The one that knows how to hire, how to fundraise, how to move the pieces of the business puzzle around to turn someone's idea into a reality. Hell, in my opinion, that's why I think 95% of successful founders and/or cofounders should never be the CEO or other upper management of their company once it starts to take off. Gotta hire someone for that, let the wave ride out!

 

I like it Picasso 

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

InvestmentSpanker

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I like it Picasso 

Without punctuation, this sentence does not make sense. Did you mean "I like it, Picasso."? Please fix

Thanks

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

I think it could be pretty cool for acquisitions. You could have a purchase price and intrinsic value estimate - conducted by a valuations agent (3rd party). I can just imagine scrolling through those company listings.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

I'm a software engineer, I've worked at mostly finance/ finance facing companies and lead up some projects from start to finish. Here's some stuff to consider (that I would ask if I was going to build this out)

  • Sign Up Flow - 2 sets of users here: Investor, Investment (let's call it "startup" while describing it so it's more clear)
    • Investor: On your landing page, authenticates in (how? Email? How do you know this person is real? Is there a more complex flow to validate these people manually? You'd likely need a document proving they're accredited)
      • If you're asking for documents, you need a way to securely store them. If you do AWS infra, S3 works just fine.
      • Are these wealthy individuals? Are these firms? If firms, you need to link accounts together (Ex. VC Fund ABC Account, VCAssociate1-VC-Fund-ABC, etc)
    • Startup: On your landing page, authenticates in (how do you validate this is the real owner of said company? Same question as above essentially)
      • If you're asking for documents, you need a way to securely store them. If you do AWS infra, S3 works just fine.
  • NDA Flow
    • I'm no attorney, but assuming you need this and it holds weight, you'd likely want to use the DocuSign API (or similar). No reason to reinvent that whole platform for signing contracts, just pay another company to handle it. You do need an engineer to integrate it with your platform, can probably be inside an i-frame so the user never leaves your website. You need to store these documents, again S3 would be great here for PDF file upload.
  • Matching Flow
    • Let's ignore all the ML stuff and make this super simple- what makes someone match? Find those parameters. Do you match based off of investors with a specific capital allocation to your platform (let's put a pin in that, I'll address money below) to startups looking for that amount? Do you create a profile for investors and match industries they like? Ex. I'm Malta, I invest in RE Tech companies, but I don't touch healthcare? That's an addition to Investor Signup Flow (Profile Creation) AND Startup Sign Up Flow (They need to create their profile so you know more about them, tags based on industry/ size/ stage/ etc)
    • Once you find the parameters to match, then what happens when they do match? Do you support messaging on your app?  Then you need messaging flow + encryption (I wouldn't want investment details not encrypted).
  • Money Flow
    • Do you handle money? That's a big box to dive into and talk about there.

That's a few things to think about. I've got a meeting in 5 mins so I'll cut it off right there. If you need help feel free to ping me, we can chat more. Sounds like a cool idea. As others have said, iterations of this exist but there can be multiple winners in this sector.

“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.” - Nassim Taleb
 

A possible issue that may arise: adverse selection. The better-qualified startups (with more experienced founders and greater know-how to go through the funding process) could seek investors directly, making the platform concentrate less interesting startups and ideas - which results in less investor interest in being part of the platform.

However, if you are able to get past that stage, and create a network so powerful that even the best startups and investors want to participate, it could be an amazing idea. In addition, it is also possible that the app path to find investors is seen as complementary to the direct approach, especially with a strong network present.

 

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