Killer business idea
Posted on 15. Jun, 2005 by Cassandra in Uncategorized
South Africa is full of brilliant business ideas and concepts, the problem is that very often we lack the ability to market the concepts to the rest of the world. Here’s an excellent example of a commercially web-driven ‘stokvel’.
Fundable is a peer-to-peer service that lets groups of people pool money in
‘group actions’, for whatever goal or purpose they like. Similar to an
online auction, a group action has its own page, describing how much
money will be collected and what the money will do. It has only been in
business since last month, but so far, Fundable seems to attract a mix
of fundraisers and tech savvy group buyers (for example, 10 people just
completed a group buy for a USD 1,100 HP server; each person ponied up
USD 110, for which they will receive 10GB of server space, 1GB
bandwidth per month, and at least 1 year of hosting. The deal was
initiated by ‘Louie’). None of the participants takes a risk: if the
collection for a group action falls short of its target or deadline,
all collected money is refunded. Unlike an online auction, however,
Fundable acts as a sort of escrow service between groups of people and
the person who collects their money.
It looks like a free service for now, but there’s definately potential to build this online stokvel idea into something huge…especially in this country where the stokvel system is the primary investment tool for many people….and lets face, was basically invented in South Africa. If only more people in SA had access to the internet!
[Story via this month's issue of Springwise]
5 Responses to “Killer business idea”
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Jacques
15. Jun, 2005
Regrettably there is still no way to guarantee that the co-ordinator won’t run away with the money or the purchased object. One would have to learn more about the person during the time of the fundraising. Most frustrating about sites like this though is that South Africans can’t use PayPal. Any ideas on how we can lobby our Reserve bank to restore our earlier status? it really puts a damper on many of my forays into cyberspace shopping malls.
"Hello_World"
16. Jun, 2005
Fundable
This is pretty damn cool, in fact, I’m surprised more people aren’t talking about it (or have I been sleeping?). Fundable is a peer-to-peer service that lets groups of people pool money in ‘group actions’, for whatever goal or
UserDriven
17. Jun, 2005
Using Fundable to Fund Fundable
Just noticed an increase in traffic coming from Fundable… Welcome! You are probably looking for the Userdriven Fundraising post that kicked off the modest campaign to say thank you to Fundable for creating such an excellent system by Using Fundable
Cherryflava
17. Jun, 2005
Not really sure that it’s a Reserve Bank issue that’s preventing the use of Paypal. I just think that South Africa is just not on their list of countries that they’re willing to do business with.
I guess that could change if there is a demand for it. Perhaps the solution is to get a bit of a petition going?
Dissertation Ideas
10. Dec, 2009
I think that this service provides great opportunity to people.