We’ve been running a series of blog posts every Friday called Fairmint Stories. In each post, we interview founders who use Fairmint about why they chose to open up equity to their community. We found that each of them, while in completely different industries, had one thing in common: they were looking to create their own hybrid solutions to ownership.
We were so inspired and moved by their stories of innovations, and wanted to share them all with you. Here’s what happened when six different founders started using Fairmint:
They attracted investment in their sleep
Erxes, an open source martech solution, was running into limitations when it came to finding investors. Even with 25,000 users and 20+ large enterprises in their customer base, they found it hard to nail down interest from Silicon Valley VCs. So they opened up equity to their community.
“We have developers, angels, open source users, tech agencies, all kinds of profiles. We’ve had multiple business partners start working with us, and who have then invested in us. It really can be anybody,” says Nauren Batjargal, COO. They have since attracted over 120+ investors, who have provided over $2.7M+ in capital so far.
They perfected their product-market fit
Lief Larson, CEO of Salesfolks, wanted to build his product community and create more sustainable customer relationships. By aligning users, the company, and its investors, the community has become a part of a company’s long-term success.
“People reach out and say, ‘This is super, the ability to be an owner, to have more of an impact on what the platform becomes.’ They’ve never had that kind of access to a startup before. And that sense of community-owned pride will turn them into salesfolks — no pun intended — for our platform,” he says.
They saved up to 70% of their time
Mihai Crasneanu, founder of a web3 video platform called Beem, says that Fairmint has probably saved him 70% of his time. Typically a founder has to devote time to go on a fundraising roadshow. With Fairmint, Mihai doesn’t have to take time out of his schedule to meet with investors — he can focus on his product.
What’s more: his company, which puts creators in the driver’s seat, has become even more valuable to his users because they can own part of the company. “The Rolling SAFE and Fairmint perfectly match the community-built businesses that are going to be taking over in the coming years,” he says.
They found a flywheel
Hospitable.com, a platform that enables property owners to rent out their places to guests, has found that their customers are enthusiastic not only about using their product, but investing in it. With $1 billion in revenue and 269,000 properties across the globe, founder Pierre-Camille Hamana has found that community ownership has truly become his company’s flywheel.
Pierre-Camille says that Hospitable is “not only increasing our customer numbers, but have customers who love us so much that they’ve also invested. Fairmint perfectly matches the community-built businesses that are going to be taking over in the coming years.”
They generated more interest from traditional VCs
Gil Hildebrand, CEO of Gilded, has seen an uptick in interest from more traditional investors. Why? He’s been able to prove that his community is willing to stick by him and invest. His investors range from angel investors, product fans, and customers.
“As soon as our seed round came together, we had lots of investors who wanted to get in,” he says. “At some point, there’s just no room left. Before, that interest — and money — gets left behind. Now, we just tell those investors that the round’s closed, but that they can log on to Fairmint and invest. And it works.”
They were able to reward their globally distributed team
What’s Cookin’, an events platform created by software engineer Golda Velez, uses Fairmint to distribute ownership to their global team. Not only can their team access equity that they might not normally be able to own, but they can be rewarded continuously.
“Normally when you issue equity, it’s issued in these big chunks,” says Golda. “With Fairmint, we can actually issue that equity very granularly, in small amounts, as our employees do work, continuously. And adjust it in real-time.”
We hope these six stories show you all the different ways you can raise capital for your startup. Community ownership is the way of the future. With more startups being built than ever before, it’s critical that founders think through their equity plan from the beginning.
