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CouchTycoon : P2P venture market
04/07/2008
Innovation
CouchTycoon is the "Friends and Family" Venture Network. It is about micro-investments for
each community member; but these investments are powerful as a community. There
you can suggest investment opportunities (even your own start-up) or you can join
other ones, suggested by other community members. Participants can directly invest
in start-ups (starting at approximately $5) and they can trade their shares they
bought once. To invest and trade shares, members must convert their dollars to
"CouchChips" first, which is the currency of the website. To submit a project,
they have to describe it like they would do in an e-mail to one of their friends.
Their post will appear on the "Going to Beef Island" site as well as in the "Going
to Beef Island Feed". This way, community members can be updated when new suggestions
are published.
How would this apply to you ? « Back to previous pagePerspective
CouchTycoon seems like a monopoly game in real life. Like other social networks, it is based on the idea that community creates value. Together, members create ideas, identify trends, select their favourite ventures and fund them with micro investments. They also control the venture, sell and buy shares. The creator of this network wanted to make start a company as easily as writing an e-mail. That is why he also decided to use simple blogs as project spaces, where entrepreneurs can describe their venture in a few sentences that can be added with comments by friends and can grow to a financed venture in a collaborative way.
