RedCrow, a crowdfunding investment platform, launched last week with healthcare as its premier vertical. The company counts Talking Heads guitarist and keyboardist Jerry Harrison as part of its founding team.
The platform currently is only accepting investments from accredited investors, but was founded with the goal of eventually taking advantage of newly live provisions of the 2012 JOBS ACT that will let them accept investments from the general public as well. They plan to open up investment to nonaccredited investors in early 2017. For the moment, the general public and, especially, industry insiders like doctors and nurses, can weigh in via the "Discovery" section of the site, which RedCrow will use to vet the companies that it puts up for funding.
"The idea here is that we’ll present investment options in a focused, themed session so that individuals and – over time again this will include accredited and nonaccredited individuals – industry experts, investors and advisors from all walks of life, can share expertise or just interest in that space," Ann Taylor, principal director of investor strategies for RedCrow, told MobiHealthNews. "And they can come together and collaborate and take advantage of the wisdom and the experience of the greater crowd and again we believe that will not only help drive investor confidence but better decisions."
Right now, three companies are securing investments on the site, very similarly to the way products are funded on crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter or Indiegogo. Currently, the site features videos and descriptions for three companies: Ixcela, a Boston-based hard science company aiding individuals in measuring and improving their internal fitness; MiRTLE Medical, a medical device company creating new MRI-based procedures in the hopes of delivering improved patient outcomes while ensuring patient safety; and Stretch, an Austin-based, mobile sharing platform for critical medical and family data.
"We’ve realized how powerful videos are to tell you a story and if you’re going to do something over the internet, videos are the most powerful vehicle right now for telling stories," CEO and founder Brian Smith told MobiHealthNews. "With that said, we put a lot of time and effort and energy into creating these campaigns that, until they’re right, they won’t go on the site. But ideally I’d love to see averaging 20 companies live on each vertical at all times."
Smith founded the company after leaving Morgan Stanley and attempting to help a fetal monitoring company called MindChild Medical secure early funding. He came to believe there was a funding gap for companies in the healthcare space that crowdfunding could address. He partnered with Harrison, who had a background in leveraging the wisdom of the crowd when he founded GarageBand.com in 1999 to help get exposure for small bands.
"RedCrow is today focused on healthcare, but it is our aim to add more verticals to the platform in the future," Harrison said in a statement. "One day, our companies might be innovators in cybersecurity, fintech, and virtual reality. We’ll let the crowd decide. But no matter the vertical, every RedCrow company promises to make a meaningful social impact.”
