Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding meets mass customization - Innovative investment model for startups

A group of entrepreneurs from RWTH Aachen university have developed an interesting model of crowdfunding in the early / seed financing sector -- and one of their first projects is a mass customization start-up in the game market.

The start-up, Innovestment, is a crowdinvesting platform for startup-investments. It is not a micro-financing site, but more one that allows people with a real demand for investing money the opportunity to participate in innovative conceots with low risk.

The model is based on "silent partnerships" (a well established legal form in Europe),  and the pricing/valuation will be done through an innovative auction mechanism.

The first auctions start at the end of October, and the first three profiles of participating ventures are online. Investing is possible with amounts starting from approx. Euro 2,000.

One of the first ventures in the Innovestment line-up is a mass customization project called Ludufactur. Drawing on the Germans’ fondness for board games (think of "Siedler"), Ludufactur will exclusively personalize many best-selling games using technologies like 3D modeling and printing (e.g. modeling a pawn after a fotograph), thereby mainly catering to the market for gifts.  Their website is not yet online, but a few promising examples can be viewed on their profile at innovestment.

So if this is successful, a new way also for other mass customization sites may be open!

More info at www.innovestment.de.