Jason W. Best Talks on Crowdfunding, Venture Capital, and Fintech

The GMBA / EiMBA / NTUTEC / NTUCEP offices of National Taiwan University (NTU) and the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) co-hosted a seminar featuring “How Crowdfunding, Venture Capital, and Fintech are Shifting the Financial Landscape” on November 20.

The guest speaker Mr. Jason W. Best, a tech-entrepreneur turned investor who co-authored the crowdfund-investing framework used in the JOBS Act to legalize securities-based crowdfunding in the US, shared his insights on crowdfunding with participants. Prior to the seminar, Prof. Ji-Ren Lee (李吉仁), Director of Taidah Entrepreneurship Center, delivered an introductory speech citing the speaker and agenda of the seminar.

The speaker Mr. Best started by talking about investors’ evaluation of important factors such as team, target market, product, etc. prior to funding. Also, Mr. Best discussed crowdfunding investors, angel investors, and early stage venture capitalists. He introduced 12 crowdfunding tips that help ensure the proposed project gets funded at the right time. Subsequently, he focused on different types of crowdfunding such as donations, rewards, debt, equity, and Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). He also emphasized that crowdfunding platforms should collaborate with social media platforms to disseminate information about the project or business. A successful campaign on different platforms like bloggers, social media, public relations, traditional media, and meetings can accelerate the funding process for the required project or business. If the fundraising reaches the expected goal, it is necessary for the fundraiser to update the investors on the progress of the project or business in a regular interval to meet their expectation. Finally, there was a prolonged Q&A session where participants clarified their doubts and which they found to be a very in-depth and fascinating discussion between the participants and the speaker.

(Source: Ananta Kar, 1st-Year GMBA Student & GMBA Office, NTU)