Details of Sinbad Ventures Pivot: Wireframes of the MVP

This is a follow up post to my “VC Pivot” post earlier. It took me some time to finalize the new model for Sinbad Ventures and to find the right technical partner to do it. Below is the new model and its MVP Wireframes. I would appreciate your feedback and suggestions.

In Summary:

The new Sinbad Ventures is all about featuring Top Startups to Invest-In for Angel Investors and Crowdfunders recommended and reviewed by Venture Advisors.

Why To Do This Now?

Equity crowdfunding is becoming legal in several countries around the world. Technology news sites in USA are talking about more than 50 crowd funding platforms lined up and ready to take the license.

While people are crazily competing on who will become the hottest crowd-funding platform, the most important question later on will be: Who are the hottest startups to invest-in? Then funders or crowd investors will go to where they are listed and invest in them. So there will be a need for a place to find such hot startups.

But who will recommend startups?! I think that more and more VCs will be shifting to the early/growth stages while leaving the the seed stage investments to angel investors, crowd investors and to the accelerators (who I think will cooperate more with crowd funding platforms soon).

This means that VCs will be willing to recommend startups for the crowds to invest in, acting like “Venture Advisors”. So that they can follow up on these investments later on in the next rounds if they succeed, i.e. this will be a win-win cooperation between VCs and Angel or Crowd Investors.

Investment transactions can be done on any equity crowd funding website such as: AngelList, CircleUp, CrowdValley, SeedInvest, etc… So that Sinbad Ventures will only be a Recommendation Community.

In Details:

Sinbad Ventures is an Investment Recommendation Community for Angel and Crowdfunding Investors by Venture Advisors.

- Venture Advisors:

Venture Advisors can create their own “Startup Lists” where they list top startups to invest-in, and post their reviews about these startups.

Venture Advisors may offer free and/or paid services. Free services will simply be recommending and reviewing startups in Lists. Paid services may include: selecting, processing, managing, and/or monitoring startups performance.

Venture Advisors have their own profiles, with details about their investment thesis, track records and offered services. They get paid by Investors with monthly subscription fees. Different Venture Advisors offer different value-add services, thus, they set different monthly subscription fees to access their own deals lists and services.

- Angel Investors and Equity Crowdfunding Investors:

Investors can follow specific “Venture Advisors” and/or specific “Startup Lists” to receive updates and notifications. Investors may browse lists for free, and contact startups directly.

Alternatively, Investors can pay subscription fees for specific Venture Advisors (based on their profiles, track record, investment thesis and value-add services) to access their deals lists and their services.

This way, Investors will be treated as if they are LPs, but without committing to traditional fund structures, and without sharing the upsides of their investments with fund managers.

MVP:

To test the concept in the market, we will start with a minimal viable product. There will be only free lists. No value-add services and no subscriptions. If there are enough Venture Advisors and lists, and if there are enough Investors following those Venture Advisors, then we will go to the next step.

Wireframes:

Here is the draft vision of the website. Please let me know your initial feedback about the concept and the website functions.

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Wireframes of the new Sinbad Ventures (MVP) from Ahmad Takatkah