We never expected to have nearly as strong a start as we’ve had in the two-and-a-half months since launch. We are thrilled that over 5,200 investors and entrepreneurs, have joined Seedrs to allocate or seek capital, four awesome startups have been funded and others are getting great traction.
But a strong start is no excuse for complacency, and we’ve been working hard since launch to collect and reflect on the feedback we’ve gotten from our users. It’s been an extremely constructive process, and we are confident that the platform and user experiences will be significantly improved as a result. Below are a few carefully considered changes we’re making in direct response to some of this initial feedback.
Overhauling the browse startups process
”It’s not easy to discover startups I find interesting.” We’ve had tremendous interest from entrepreneurs who are looking to raise capital for their businesses and have been trying to get them onto the platform as quickly as possible. But, having to click through several pages of listings to find a good investment fit is not an ideal experience for investors. Many listings are getting lost in the mix and aren’t getting investment – not necessarily because they are bad ideas, but because they weren’t easy to discover.
So, we’re overhauling the browsing experience – eliminating the need for pages upon pages of startups by adding increased filtering, favouriting and discovery features to make it easier for investors to find the right startups for them and help newer listings become more visible.
Until this development is completed, however, we’re going to reduce the number of live listings to make it easier for investors to browse potential investments. This means some of the currently live listings will be removed, and we will be limiting the number of new listings that go live. We hope this gives a better opportunity for investors to thoughtfully peruse and engage with available listings, in the period before the re-design of the pages is complete.
Shouting out about SEIS and EIS
“No one knows about SEIS.” It’s true – the excitement of SEIS and EIS has been lost in the mix of banking scandals, government agendas and summer holidays.
So, we have committed ourselves to championing these schemes in a series of nine road shows, called Windows of Opportunity. In partnership with former Dragon and enthusiastic entrepreneur Doug Richards, we are going to share the value of investing in startups and the benefits of SEIS throughout England in October and November. We’re also attending several other investor-centric events to ensure that people not only know about SEIS and EIS, but that they can find a concentrated number of eligible companies to invest in, on Seedrs.
And more!
We’re also working on several enhancements to social sharing options, post-investment management, design and more. These changes will be on-going and will be rolled out over the coming weeks and months.
Soon we’ll be inviting users to give us even more specific feedback as part of a survey and focus groups, and if you have any suggestions you’d like to share with us independently, please drop us a line any time. Meanwhile, we hope you find the changes we’re implementing now to be good first steps toward making investing through Seedrs simpler and more rewarding.
