#invest in the #people you #believe in
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Shahar Burg

Pipo - The first stock market for people

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Building a career is expensive. Education, training and equipment cost a lot of money! Instead of borrowing, Pipo enables you to raise money from friends, family and your social network in return for shares in your future success.

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Logan Boyd
How do you make sure that these people are going to uphold their end of the deal? Like, what if I invest in them, and then once their "days" are up they just vanish. What if they can't find a job like they wanted to for over a year, then what happens? One of the top guys on the website right now says "If I secure a position with over £100,000 starting salary, I will give back 7% of my monthly salary to everyone who invested in me each month." So what happens if he doesn't get a job with 100,000 starting salary? Then what happens to our money we invested? The way its worded he is saying he is going to give 7% back to everyone who invested in him each month, thats $7,000 per person. There is no way, because after 10 investors he would barely have any money leftover??
Ben Thompson
Maker
@mastemine Hi Logan, thank you very much for the questions! Pipsters will be incentivised to do what they say they will do in the campaign phase in a number of ways: Firstly, Pipsters will be financially incentivised to keep investors updated and to deliver on their promised givebacks - when each Pip hits a new highest price, the Pipster gets 1% of the transaction value from that investor’s pips-purchase. This incentivises the Pipster to maintain a strong, active and reliable profile on Pipo and to regularly update the chat. Secondly, there is the Pipster reputation - today, we all have our own online brand/presence and we don't want to damage it. The practice of people marketing themselves and their careers online has now become a significant part of life for most people. When everything is connected and transparent, it's hard to hide information. Thirdly, like with most crowdfunding, we’re expecting that the first investors on Pipo will be family, friends, and a person’s social network. These will be people that know the person well and have a relationship outside of the digital world. This will act as a strong incentive for the Pipster to be open and transparent, and to maintain a good reputation on Pipo by doing what they promise to do. Lastly, in future we will be looking at adding an additional feature where funds will be distributed to Pipsters in tranches based on hitting certain milestones, just like in venture capital investing. The givebacks - in this case the 7% of the salary will be distributed between all the investors. If the Pipster doesn’t find a job in this case - there will be no givebacks. The investor wins when the Pipster wins - it’s a success based investment.
Ljupcho Naumov
Looks very cool, just one question. I read this on your FAQ "Givebacks - after a pipster successfully sells all of their pips and starts working on their goal or project, they can issue givebacks as appreciation to their investors. " So paying back investors is a choice not an obligation? How is this contractually handled?
Ben Thompson
Maker
@ljupcho_naumov HI Ljupcho thanks for your support! Each Pipster defines his or her terms, and the milestones for returning givebacks as part of their campaigns. This is done transparently so everyone can see it. There won’t be a legal obligation to provide investors with givebacks, but Pipo as a platform and as a community encourages Pipsters to give back using financial and reputational incentives. Read my answers to @rrhoover and @mastemine for additional details?
Logan Boyd
@ljupcho_naumov Yeah I can see that going incredibly bad in a lot of cases as it seems they don't have to be obligated to give anything back even if they say that they will... Seems like people can just vanish more or less. Someone can easily just use a fake name or change their name legally after raising the money and get off scotch free.
Yev Yev
Found a bug, image is overlapping status bar https://prnt.sc/m4j492 Idea is great!
Ben Thompson
Maker
@tapkain Thank you!
Janne Wolterbeek
@tapkain @ben_thompson2 I can't get Google results for Emma Toms and the picture is used everywhere and probably fake. And looks a heck of a lot like Nina Kraviz....
Ben Thompson
Maker
@tapkain @waldbach hey Janne, as we said in the opening post, these are all dummy profiles at the moment. Thank you!
tomkuhn
Sounds a lot like Upstart.com that was created by former Google Exec Dave Girouard. They were forced to pivot to essentially be a loan company (https://www.bizjournals.com/sanj...). One difference here is Upstart had funds allocated to the individuals vs open market. So the risk here is on the supporters and less on the company, but it does not address the fundamental risk of the business model. Can you enforce this? Will the Pips pay back, etc. Upstart has been turned into a debt collection agency more than ever because of these issues.
Ben Thompson
Maker
@tomkuhn great point thank you. I think there are a few big differences. Pipo is for many, many verticals, not just one like education. Pipo is aimed initially at least at young talented people raising money from friends, family and their social network - not professional investors - although everyone is welcome. For questions on the business model and givebacks, please see my answers above to @mastemine and @coconidodev or check out our FAQ: https://pipo.io/faq
Piotr Zbrojkiewicz (Pete)
Interesting concept. Definitely sparked enough curiosity to go and read more on your site. After reading most of the homepage it's not immediately clear what investors get in return for investing in someone. Sure they get givebacks and can sell their pips, but if I was going to use the platform I'd need to understand much more clearly and more concretely what that all looks like. Even if I just want to use it as a Pipster, because I'm thinking "Will my friends get value for investing in me? Or am I asking for a donation here?" Just some thoughts from a copywriting perspective (I'm a startup copywriter), but I think you've got something here :)
Ben Thompson
Maker
@pete_zbrojkiewicz hi Pete. Each Pipster will set their individual Pip price and givebacks as their campaign starts. So if you’re the Pipster, you will tell your friends, family and your wider network how you plan to give back. It’s up to you to make it both achievable and attractive to potential investors - just like in start-up funding. Thank you for checking out our site! Did you read our FAQ? https://pipo.io/faq
Lola
Interesting concept. I wonder how this would be regulated? Where there's a will there's a way so keep at it. Rome wasn't build in a day think Uber.
Ben Thompson
Maker
@lolasal_inc Hey Lola thank you so much for your comment and this question. You're quite right, Rome wasn't built in a day! We will make sure we have really strong regulation on the site, both to make sure we only allow bona fide Pipsters onto the platform, and also to protect investors. Thanks again and please visit www.Pipo.io if you would like to Go Pipo!
Omkar Nisal

Love the concept.. it will be nice to see people actually give back tim returns and how they go about .

Pros:

It will be awesome to invest in bunch of people's

Cons:

Not sure if the investments be authentically tracked

Ben Thompson
Maker
Hi Omkar! Thank you so much for your comments - our FAQ section has some more information about how givebacks are managed, please check out: https://pipo.io/faq#interacting-...
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