BizFund

Inspiration

Small businesses are the soul of our community and play a large role in economic well-being, serving as the backbone of many jobs. However, as the pandemic hit, over 400 million small businesses were affected and forced to burn through money just to stay afloat. According to the World Trade Organization, small-and medium-sized enterprises represent over 90 percent of the business population, 60-70% of employment, and 55% of GDP in developed economies. SMEs, therefore, do not just significantly contribute to the economy – they ARE the economy. Because SMEs account for 40-50% of national GDPs, depending on each country, there is an industry value of over 2.3 trillion dollars in the UK alone, not to mention the rest of the world’s countries. 1 in every 3 small businesses had to consider shutting down permanently due to COVID measures which were out of their control. Business Owners who had saved up for years in hopes of starting their own business had their shops closed or put into indefinite hiatus. Whilst seeing their sole stream of income become their biggest liability as they were forced to pay rent, crippling them financially, as well as harming the overall sense of community. Yet there is no viable solution to sustain the businesses that are the backbone of our community and world.

What it does

Nowadays, there exist crowdfunding sources for investors, founders, start-ups, and projects, like GoFundMe, yet there is not one for small businesses. Another problem with all these pre-existing fundraising platforms is that they are not up to date with trending technology and lack innovation, they are plagued by middlemen, processing time, and fees, and are unfairly driven by algorithms, which select only a few kinds of fundraisers. Introducing BizFund, a funding app designed specifically for small businesses to help raise capital through blockchain technology, using initial token offerings (ITO) with the goal of reinventing small business sustainability with emerging tech, thus allowing them to compete with large corporations within the community. We’re not just any crowdfunding platform you would find out there, we’re implementing emerging technologies to power our crowdfunding platform. Bizfund rethinks the functional-emotional orientation of its industry by creating an emotional connection to physical, real, businesses which the user can visit in person. And finally, Bizfund participates in shaping external trends over time as blockchain gains more and more legitimacy in the world. To raise funds, a business will choose to start an Initial Token Offering, where users will be able to buy a new token and, in doing so, give money to the business. The technology will offer transparency and full individual control of data, as each transaction will be recorded on a public ledger in Blockchain for anyone to see. Furthermore, with smart contracts, there is no third party, meaning that there is no trail of money to follow. Upon completion of the smart contract, the money goes directly from the person donating to the small business.

Not just that, there is a significant reduction in costs and time to organize the sale and collect money afterward. Small businesses often need every cent they can get, so efficiency on the fees front is essential. The beauty of it is that with enough support, the token value will rise, giving investors and donors an incentive in supporting business owners while simultaneously contributing to a great cause.

How we built it

As of right now, we are beginning to develop the prototype, but everything is in its graphic form on Figma as we prepare to scale the idea.

What's next for BizFund

Our concept aims to eliminate Centralization and Intermediaries, General & Broad Niches, Payment Fraud Liabilities, Violations, Lawsuits, Ordinary Transaction Technology while reducing Transaction Processing Time and Algorithmic & Virality Driven Competitors. We hope to achieve this by increasing transparency, security, efficiency, and simplicity, as well as creating a donation and token incentive system. Small Business Resilience Adoption and Business Opportunities for Emerging Technology and Blockchain Innovation. Our solution plans to eliminate intermediaries and ordinary transaction technology. We will raise transparency for the user, reduce algorithm-driven competition, and create incentives for someone to donate, with the goal of supplying and improving the most essential parts of crowdfunding. We are focused on eliminating centralization and intermediaries who bog down the process; we are going to eliminate the use of ordinary transaction technology, and through doing so, eliminate payment frauds. With BizFund, we will raise transparency, security, efficiency, and simplicity for both the user and business owner. We will reduce transaction processing time, and algorithmic driven competition, as instead of algorithm driving recommendations, it will be based on the businesses in the community which the user is already familiar with. Finally, we will create investment incentives for donation, support for small businesses, adoption and innovation of blockchain technology, and business opportunities. The core demographic for our product revolves around Small businesses that were negatively affected by the Covid-19 Pandemic. Our soon-to-be customers refer to most small businesses as a whole, regardless of their pandemic financial situations. Those who are opposed will include Large businesses and corporations who want to keep the market edge. Finally, we have yet to explore investor ventures and medium enterprises that could be funded using our System. As of now, we have created working tokens on our service using the ERC20 standard system as well as gaining over 200 survey responses for feedback to implement. Over the next twelve months, we plan to begin developing for 1-4 months, then move into prototyping in the fourth to sixth month. Next, we’ll transition to entering the worldwide market, and within 9 to twelve months, we will begin scaling our app. So far, we have validated our model through surveys and interviews, and we have received outstanding consumer support. With small businesses contributing 40-50% of a nation’s GDP, which is trillions of dollars, by offering our service for their survivability and support through a small transaction fee, our market value is predicted to exceed leading companies like GoFundMe, Party Round, and Patreon.

Built With

• etherscan
• figma
• solidity