Armenian “Sprint” Crowdfunders’ Fund to finance startups

“Sprint” Crowdfunders’ Fund has announced the launch of its operations in Armenia. Sprint is a specialized investment vehicle that finances startups by providing a marketing budget for their crowdfunding campaigns.

The fund was created at the initiative of Global AM and has already financed its first project, Bristly Brushing Stick, which raised over USD400k or more than 2,500% of its funding goal.

A recent research claims that over 60% of crowdfunding campaigns fail, and the main reason is the lack of marketing expertise and marketing budget.

“So, having a well-developed prototype or a product is no more enough for the crowdfunding campaign to succeed or to show its full potential in terms of the funds raised. Even the most successful crowdfunding campaigns cannot unleash their full potential and raise even more due to the lack of their marketing budgets. “Sprint” Crowdfunders’ Fund is aimed at solving this problem,” said the fund.

According to Sprint fund manager Karen Vardanyan, a professionally managed marketing budget brings returns of 5-10 times in terms of funds raised during the campaign.

“Further deep dive into the issue shows that up to recent times there was no one institution that would provide both expertise and funding for the campaign marketing,” he said.

The product range offered by Sprint will consist of campaign funding, equity funding and a mix of both. In particular, the portfolio startups will be provided with a budget of up to USD 100,000, to be spent on marketing their campaigns through crowdfunding agencies. In return the startups will pay back the budget with interest upon the end of the campaign.

The fund said they have experienced partners, which raised millions of dollars, and a prominent advisory board that includes John Vaskis, Vice President of sales at Indiegogo; Evan Varsamis, CEO of Gadget Flow; Jesus Lozano, founder of Business Angels Network of Madrid.