When we think of crowd-funding, Kickstarter and Indiegogo come to mind.

For instance, over 20,000 film and video projects have been successfully funded on Kickstarter, with an average goal of approximately $5,000-$10,000 and pledges of about $25-$30.

But what if you want to raise much more money, and instead of giving away ‘rewards’ (otherwise known as perks or swag) you want to give away shares in your project company? Enter Equity Crowd-funding or Crowd-investing.

There are two options when crowd-investing in Canada: the Start-up Crowdfunding Exemption and the Regulation Respecting Crowdfunding.

The maximum value that can be raised is $250K twice a year with the first, and $1.5 million with the second.

Four provinces allow both, four don’t allow either and the rest allow one of each.

FundingNomad is the new kid on the block in Ontario:

“FundingNomad is a crowdfunding platform that presents exclusive deals to investors that have been fully vetted and selected by our professional team of experts. Many angels and institutional investors choose to invest through FundingNomad because of the increased efficiency and access to deal flow.”

My take: keep in mind, most investors are in the game to make money. When you invite investors into your company, you’re competing with all the other investment opportunities out there. So, your promise needs to be unique and the return attractive, or you need to appeal to other motivators. For docs, that might be the cause, for narrative projects, that might be the stars, for instance.