Among the myriad equity crowdfunding platforms — which allow anyone to invest in startups — you can choose from, StartEngine is one of the leaders. A critical factor has been the company’s early mover advantage in the industry. But StartEngine has also been innovating. For example, the company recently rolled out a secondary trading platform. This allows for trading in the shares of startups, which should help to encourage even more trading activity.
Howard Marks is the CEO and co-founder of StartEngine. Before launching the company, he started several other successful ventures, most notably Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ:ATVI), which has a market value of $63 billion. He also co-founded Acclaim games, which was later sold to Disney (NYSE:DIS).
MedVector
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Recruiting for clinical trials is usually expensive and time-consuming. This means not only a longer process for getting drugs to market, but also have less time for patent protection.
Some of the challenges with clinical trials include HIPAA privacy laws and the difficulties of putting together a diverse patient population. For example, in 2017, there was demand for about four million patients, but only 1.8 million were enrolled.
But for MedVector, this onerous process presents an opportunity. The company is building a sophisticated telemedicine platform for clinical trials. This is a plug-and-play system that is fully HIPAA-compliant but has the necessary tools for finding and recruiting patients.
Plus by leveraging telemedicine, MedVector is able to bring more efficiency. There are also functions to allow for collecting data and performing analysis for a broad array of categories like pills, sprays, inhalers, creams, drops and self-injectable medications.
In terms of traction, MedVector has signed agreements with seven hospitals that have hundreds of thousands of patients. Moreover, a case study with Novartis (NYSE:NVS) has shown that the recruiting for a clinical trial took only seven weeks.
As for the equity crowdfunding campaign, MedVector has raised over $492,000 from 227 investors, and the valuation is $10 million. The minimum investment amount is $495.90.
On the date of publication, Tom Taulli did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article.
Tom Taulli (@ttaulli) is the author of various books on investing and technology, including Artificial Intelligence Basics, High-Profit IPO Strategies and All About Short Selling. He is also the author of courses on topics like the Python language and COBOL.
Investing through equity and real estate crowdfunding or asset tokenization requires a high degree of risk tolerance. Despite what individual companies may promise, there’s always the chance of losing a portion, or the entirety, of your investment. These risks include:
1) Greater chance of failure
2) Risk of fraudulent activity
3) Lack of liquidity
4) Economic downturns
5) Dearth of investor education