Company founders on crowdinvesting: Every investor can provide know-how as well as money

Crowdfunding is about more than capital – it also has the advantage that investors are people with specific knowledge who can offer the companies in which they invest more than just financial help. Company founders and investors summed up their experiences at the Crowdberry Forum during the panel discussion “Capital is more than just money”, which included executives from waste management company Sensoneo, boat rental and yacht charter booking platform Boataround, and Creative Pro, one of the largest digital and event agencies in Europe. 

Creative Pro received an injection of growth capital via Crowdberry, which executives said played a vital important role in the company’s evolution. “We never called ourselves a startup, but we worked with our own equity for many years. We had to come up with other solutions if we wanted to grow, and it was Crowdberry that helped us expand and raise new funds,” said Štefan Kozák, the company’s founder. 

Kozák sees such private investors as some of the key people behind the company’s success. They don’t do this anonymously but invest their money with certain intentions, which, according to him, provides the added value. This is also what helped Creative Pro manage to survive the difficult period during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Good chemistry is the basis

Growth capital also helped Slovak company Sensoneo, a leader in waste management. Using the funding, in a short period of time the company managed to expand from just two countries to more than 64. 

“Our team has grown from five to 50 people, and sales are doubling year on year. In addition to money, each investor provided us with more know-how, from product pricing to software setup. These are the areas where they helped us and developed our business,” said Martin Basila, who founded the company with his wife.