FinObserver - Observatory on Innovation in Retail Financial Services

ULULE, the new crowdfunding website

07/30/2010

Innovation

ULULE is a French website which enables you to find the funds you need for your projects. You can sponsor a project for a certain chosen amount and in exchange you receive personalized rewards (advertisement space, goodies…) and you are able to follow the project’s evolution. When uploading a project, you must fill in the amount you need for the project as well as a dead line for the funding. If, by the end date, the project has not been fully funded, the donations are not debited. Uploading a project can be done for free by anyone above the age of 18.

Perspective

An example of an ULULE project: iPhone in a bottle. The project consists in sending a bottle to sea with two iPhone4 in it. The iPhones will be programmed to take pictures at recurrent intervals during their trip at sea. These pictures will be automatically downloaded on the website of the project when they connect to a GPRS or 3G network. One of the iPhones will facing the sea line and the other will be facing into the water. The batteries of all the technical devices will be powered by solar power, they should therefore be able to work until the iPhones reach the shore.