The Skinny on Skipso

This article originally was published here: https://www.greenchipstocks.com/articles/the-skinny-on-skipso/80014

Equity crowdfunding is still just a blip on America’s radar, but we can learn from Europe’s experience.

Individual investors in certain EU nations have been backing new projects in exchange for a cut of the profits, while only accredited American investors have that privilege. Pending SEC rulemaking, we will eventually be able to invest in a crowdfunded project and expect something more than a crappy t-shirt as our ROI.

It will give small-time investors the ability to sink money into projects they believe in, and actually claim a stake in their success.

For energy investors, this is especially promising, and in Europe there are already equity crowdfunding sites dedicated to cleantech and sustainability.

We recently looked at UK-based cleantech crowdfunding site Trillion Fund as it merged with social entrepreneurial site Buzzbnk. Trillon Fund offers crowdfunders a direct stake in renewable energy projects through a Kickstarter-like user interface.

Skipso, another UK-based cleantech platform site came into existence before the big crowdfunding boom in 2008, and has hung around in a quiet corner of the Internet ever since.

What is Skipso?

Because it was designed before the current trends were set, Skipso is different from other crowdfunding sites in most respects.

Instead of simply being a site for projects to raise money, Skipso is a marketplace that can be used by anyone in the cleantech sector. Beyond raising money, it can be used for collaboration, lead generation, communication, content creation, or as a knowledge and talent exchange. It can also be shopped out as a white-label platform for green tech companies to use internally or externally.

It has a pretty diverse range of uses for a green energy site.

The funding portion of the site isn’t focused on projects looking for investment. Rather, it’s designed to let investors set up profiles and publicize the types of projects they’re looking to get behind in the form of “funding events.” Entrepreneurs can then create funding requests and target specific investors. It’s more like traditional fundraising than modern crowdfunding.

The Benefit of Historical Perspective

The more popular areas of the site appear to have been its fundraising contests, but they haven’t had any major updates for two years.

Skipso is nearly dormant today. Most of its events are expired, its funding events have dwindled down to below 50, and there are only about a hundred investors with active profiles.

However, if you comb through the listings on the site, you find the footprints of a crowdfunded solar project before it hit it big.

Solar Roadways put a promotion on Skipso back in 2010, a full four years before its breakout two million dollar Indiegogo campaign earlier this year.

The fun part about looking at this early Solar Roadways post is that we can see how much the company changed its message to the public.

The Solar Roadways video that went viral in 2014 was loud, sarcastic, and snappily edited. Nearly 17.5 million people have viewed it over a span of two months, and hundreds of reaction videos were posted and received their own flows of traffic. It was a bona fide sensation.

The video from 2010 was a segment of a documentary called “Your Environmental Road Trip” (YERT) and though the solar roadways concept was essentially identical, there was none of the slick marketing that pushed the Indiegogo campaign into the public eye.

The Lesson

Skipso is heavy on options, and light on content. To be frank, it’s also very unsexy. It’s not exactly the kind of place that is attractive to “the crowd.”

This is one of the reasons Kickstarter has had such a strong impact on fundraising. By giving entrepreneurs a platform that is appealing to end users, it has significantly simplified marketing.

It turned the foreign concept of seed investment into a simple e-commerce transaction. If a consumer wanted something to be made, they’d put money toward its creation. The job for the entrepreneur was just to tell their story.

This is where renewable energy and infrastructure projects can learn from Solar Roadways. Even with an implausible concept, a compelling story can attract crowdfunding backers.

When equity crowdfunding reaches broad availability in the United States, the average American consumer will already be familiar with the concept of crowdfunding and will be more amenable to equity investing.

All the energy entrepreneurs need to do is sell a story.

This article originally was published here: https://www.greenchipstocks.com/articles/the-skinny-on-skipso/80014

The Skinny on Skipso originally appeared in Green Chip Stocks. Green Chip Stocks, your personal guide to investing in green, sustainable, alternative, and renewable energy stocks.