24 BCBusiness JUNE 2014 illUstratioN: graham roUmiEU
1. Paint rain clouds on the office
windows so you don't feel like you're
missing out.
2. ask your boss if you can shift your
regular 9-5 to a slightly earlier 6-2,
so you can capture a portion of the
afternoon sun (even if it means being
exhausted).
3. move meetings outside. Even a
sunny downtown sidewalk beats a
stuffy boardroom.
4. Dress like you're going to the beach
to uplift your office-worn spirits.
5. instagram photos of eating your
lunches outside. Friends will think you're
on a picnic, and if you keep up the ruse
you might end up believing it yourself.
6. turn your computer monitor to max
brightness, put on some shades and
soak up the closest thing to the sun
you'll see all day.
v i s u a l l e a r n i n g
How to Beat the
Summer Blues
"You marry investors," she says,
pointing out that on average it takes 15
years to bring a startup from concept
to market. "If you're going to be in a
long-term relationship, you want to
be sure you're with people who are
sophisticated and understand risk,
and have the money and accept the
risk fully.... It's hard enough to manage
just a couple of investors, never mind a
whole bunch of small ones."
Daryl Hatton is founder of Fund-
razr, a Vancouver-based crowdfunding
platform that specializes in leveraging
social media to tap into local
communities. He says he's seen
probably a thousand companies enter
the crowdfunding space in recent
years, many intent on staking a claim
in the rush for online equity platforms.
He believes, however, there's a place
for equity crowdfunding that doesn't
include hordes of unsophisticated
get-rich-quick investors. He describes
the hypothetical example of a remote
community that wants to buy a
wind turbine: these typically cost
around half-a-million dollars, and
involve long-term contracts with
utilities guaranteeing revenue. An
entrepreneur could form a company
around the project, and use a site like
Fundrazr to fund it.
Hatton argues that the motive for
investors doesn't have to be making
a killing on speculative stocks: "It's
about building a community of people
that are interested in your product or
service or company."
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1
2
3
4
5
6
soUrCE: the World bank, oct. 2013
number of crowd-
fund investing
Platforms
344 87 53 34
p22-27-Intel_june.indd 24 2014-05-01 1:18 PM
