Equity crowdfunding is taking off in England, as we reach the £100 million (about $148 million) threshold. About 3.5 percent of that value was raised by a single project: JustPark.

The project started as Parkatmyhouse.com, back in 2006, so it is not really a startup. It is a project that allows owners of unused parking spaces to rent them to other people, using the Internet and, as of now, their smartphones.

They have an interesting partnership, such as the one with Chargemaster, a manufacturer of chargepoints, and Transport for London, the government company that is responsible for transportation solutions in the Greater London area. The partnership aims at providing free recharge spots for electric vehicles in the some parking areas available through their platform.

Their market presence, with over 500,000 users per year, granted them investment in 2014 from Index Ventures, a San Francisco venture capital company, after their rebranding to JustPark.

The campaign launched on Crowdcube in 2015 shows how venture capital and equity crowdfunding are complementary to each other. Their goal was to raise £1 million, but they managed to surpass that value in just four days of campaign running. A single investor put in £500,000 in the project. In the end, a whopping 2,702 investors put £3.5 million in the project, making it the most successful equity crowdfunding initiative to date in England.

Other projects

Other projects came very close to the £3 million threshold in Crowdcube, barely missing the number-one spot. They are:

Chilango, a Mexican food chain that used equity crowdfunding to expand their network, raised a little more than £3.4 million from 1,500 investors. Sugru, an innovative, moldable glue, raised nearly £3.4 million from 2,375 investors. Assetz Capital, a peer-to-peer lending platform that raised £3.2 million on Seedrs. 1Rebel, a gym chain that raised exactly £3 million from 460 investors on Crowdcube.

Tags: equity crowdfunding, JustPark, UK

Source: ICNW