Wefunder x Access Ventures: A playbook to empower entrepreneurs
Wefunder is the leading crowdfunded equity platform. It’s like “Kickstarter for investing.” But instead of buying a product or donating to an artist, you invest in a business, hoping to earn a return on your investment. The company’s new product, Community Rounds, allows startups and small businesses to invite customers and fans to co-invest alongside traditional venture capitalists and angel investors. They share the journey and share the wealth.
Access Ventures is a private operating foundation focused on building a more inclusive and creative economy. They founded Render Capital, a regional venture capital fund, as an intentional local investment strategy to increase access to capital for our region’s entrepreneurs.
Through this regional investment strategy, Wefunder and Access Ventures partnered to deploy the nation’s first Community Round matching fund. Together, they wanted to unlock creative ways to support founders, catalyze new investment within the region, and grow a larger community of micro-angel investors excited to support local entrepreneurs.
And that’s where we come in. We collaborated with the two companies to create a playbook for organizations that strive to empower entrepreneurs with community-sourced capital. Whitepaper-style resources can become a monotonous collection of corporate data. But when done well, these resources can transform lists and charts into relatable stories. We helped bring these entrepreneurs’ stories to life in a visually engaging and humanizing way to inspire and empower others.
We built a timeline and set of case studies that showcased not only the money raised but also the faces of the founders. Shifting away from a passive report, we laid out the project as a playbook with steps and tactics for aspiring entrepreneurs. Numerous calls to action to guide business owners to connect with Wefunder and Access Ventures also enhanced this document as something the companies can use again and again to grow impact.
For many, many years, the investing world was associated with the ultra-wealthy or institutional investors. Thankfully, things have changed. Companies like Wefunder and Access Ventures are taking big steps toward building a more inclusive economy. And that’s something we believe in.
