Equity crowdfunding?

Tagged: Funding, ICO

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mermerico
Moderator
November 2, 2015 at 7:24 pm
Post count: 10
#2060 |
Way back in the hackaday interview, Ivan talked briefly about crowdfunding for the Mill (end of video 2). This has become a great way for startups to gain early traction, but is a bit problematic for a company trying to introduce a new class of processor to the market. There may not be a large market for a high performance hobbyist computing platform (I’m interested in a Mill for my phone/laptop/desktop, but I don’t need one to replace my raspberry pi). Even if there is a market, consumers may become frustrated by delays that are bound to occur in these projects (see the controversy following Adapteva’s delay in shipping the Parallella boards).
An alternative is equity crowdfunding, whereby Mill Computing would sell stakes in the company to individuals. It seems like the biggest legal hurdles have been recently removed and some equity crowdfunding websites have already popped up. Getting a technical community that is literally invested in Mill Computing could have benefits beyond raising capital. Investors would be more likely to contribute to open source efforts on the compiler and OS fronts, for instance.
Has the Mill team discussed this at all?
Ivan Godard
Keymaster
November 2, 2015 at 7:41 pm
Post count: 689
#2061
Extensively 🙂
While the newly available Title III crowdfunding is attractive in general, there are a host of sub-categories, each with their own attractions and drawbacks, that must be decided among. In addition, the longer we are able to hold off the better the evenual deal will be. At this point we have decided to hold off any fundraising beyond the current Convertible Notes offering (sign up at http://millcomputing.com/investor-list/ if interested) until after we have numbers on the major benchmarks. Stay tuned 🙂
mermerico
Moderator
November 2, 2015 at 8:02 pm
Post count: 10
#2062
Awesome! Unfortunately I’m not in the income bracket to qualify as an accredited investor, but I’d definitely be interested in crowdfunding when the benchmarks come out.
PeterH
Participant
November 7, 2015 at 12:46 pm
Post count: 41
#2069
Is $1M/year going to be enough funding for the Mill?
- Ivan Godard
  Keymaster
  November 7, 2015 at 1:21 pm
  Post count: 689
  #2071
  $1M will definitely not be enough when we go seriously into the hardware. We still have $1M available on the convertible Notes that you can buy today. However, the Title II of the Jobs Act allows up to $5M, which will be enough for the FPGA. The next after that will be around $25M; heavy semi is not cheap 🙂
  Right now we are focused more on the software side, to get the tool chain up enough that we can run major benchmarks. The design is public enough that someone expert in CPUs can see it works, but big money tends not to be CPU-expert. Benchmarks will be more persuasive 🙂
  This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Ivan Godard.
  - BeardPower
    Participant
    April 26, 2018 at 12:10 pm
    Post count: 5
    #3267
    Dear Mill-Team,
    First of all, congratulations on what you are doing and achieved so far. Finally, there is some group of individuals innovating in the field of CPU architectures. Starting from scratch, a clean slate, without the relics from past was a long-awaited necessity to drive this industry forward.
    As being a long-term investment and very different to software-projects, as you also pointed out, generating funds can be problematic and challenging, that’s why I wanted to suggest trying to jump onto the currently popular crowd-funding possibility: ICO (Initial Coin Offering). Maybe you are already aware of it. Mostly used for technology and projects related to the crypto-space, there is no reason why it could not be successfully used for hardware-related projects outside of the crypto-space. Your project could be a game-changer in many areas, and I’m sure there is much interest in it. By creating a Mill-Token (a utility token), people can also buy products with this token and participate in the success of the company (although it’s not like a share in the company).
    Previous projects, which were running an ICO, where able to earn from 1 million USD up to 50 million USD, so there is a high probability to reach your needed funds to bring your visionary project to life!
    I added a link regarding ICO and hardware, in case you are not familiar with it, which could be interesting for you.
    https://medium.com/@tomislavmamic/ico-framework-for-hardware-projects-df2817c88bf7
    - Ivan Godard
      Keymaster
      April 26, 2018 at 1:34 pm
      Post count: 689
      #3268
      We have looked at ICOs and so far we feel that the risks arising from the unclear legal and regulatory situation makes the risks involved exceed the potential gain from the reliability of the block-chain.
      - BeardPower
        Participant
        April 26, 2018 at 1:58 pm
        Post count: 5
        #3269
        Hi Ivan,
        Thank you for your quick response!
        I see you are all well prepared and looked into every possibility very well.
        Unfortunately, the US is not the most ICO-friendly country. Let’s hope they clear the ICO situation throughout 2018.
        At least there is hope, like Wyoming’s HB-70 http://www.wyoleg.gov/2018/Engross/HB0070.pdf
        There are some recent ICOs, which aim to be fully compliant. I’m curious about their regulatory outcome, which should be soon.
        I guess moving to a more ICO-friendly country is not an option for you guys? 😉
        This reply was modified 5 years, 11 months ago by BeardPower.
        This reply was modified 5 years, 11 months ago by BeardPower.
      - Ivan Godard
        Keymaster
        April 26, 2018 at 6:14 pm
        Post count: 689
        #3272
        We the people are scattered around the world, but the company is in Delaware.
tomgrace
Participant
September 29, 2016 at 5:37 am
Post count: 1
#2162
But today it is equally gaining popularity. Whosoever gives money to the business receive ownership of small piece of that business and that is sufficient for him for taking interest in the project.
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