When Fairmint co-CEOs Joris Delanoue and Thibauld Favre exited their first companies — huge achievements they’d be working toward for years — the victory felt a bit hollow. Despite having two different entrepreneurial experiences and backgrounds, they both came to the same realization: it’s very complex — practically impossible — to effectively tap into your community capital.
Thibauld + Joris knew that both of their companies would have benefited tremendously from being able to seamlessly give their community members the ability to invest time or money in exchange for a stake in their business — whether the goal of the exchange was to raise funds or to incentivize and reward key community members.
But this lack of tools to empower and incentivize the communities around them wasn’t the only problem with this model for founders. They also had to spend months of time, energy, and money to raise rounds of traditional funding.
So they built Fairmint to fix it.
Our decentralized portal allows contributors to receive tokenized equity in exchange for time or money they contribute. Companies can put a certain amount of shares on sale to raise money or compensate community members throughout the life of their company with a simple “Invest Now” button on their website. Based on DeFi, or decentralized finance, we use blockchain to perform key financial functions without relying on expensive intermediaries like brokerages, stock exchanges, or banks.
And today, after a successful beta phase where Fairmint’s technology helped trailblazer startups raise $17.2M from their communities, we’re launching Fairmint to the whole world.
The next Uber can give their first drivers the option to earn equity in addition to cash as a reward for early adoption. The next Airbnb can incentivize their first hosts to open their homes to strangers with equity, plus their reservation revenue. The next Amazon’s first customers can invest in the company and share in the upside when it eventually IPOs.
Creating these incentive structures means better performance, quicker adoption, and more time to focus on growing your business. Your community has more skin in the game. Hourly employees and gig workers play an outsized role in building up the companies they work for; they deserve to succeed alongside the employees at headquarters. Billions of dollars of wealth that are created during IPOs and exits can be more fairly distributed to the people who helped build the company.
The desire for honest, community-rooted fundraising is huge and the benefits for founders are significant. We don’t just think this is true; we know it. We’ve already used our own product to raise over $7.3 million from our biggest fans, earliest adopters, customers, partners, and other supporters — without ever taking tons of time away from building our business to actively pitch dozens of big investors.
Imagine a world in which companies can incentivize an entire ecosystem to help them build success. Democratization is just one upside. With a Fairmint portal, busy entrepreneurs don’t have to take a break from building their companies to raise a round of funding. Investors can buy equity in companies they believe in — companies they love and use — whenever they want. A startup’s community can share its financial success. And employees or contractors can be compensated with equity seamlessly.
Community capital builds stronger, fairer, and more transparent companies.
Join us. Learn more at Fairmint.com.
