Excited to hunt Neighborly today. They're making it easy to invest in community projects that matter. I believe platforms like this will provide a better way forward for America. It's also one of our first investments at Sound Ventures. We're excited for what's to come. Hit up @jase their CEO with any questions or ideas.
Thank you @aplusk! Honored to be part of the Product Hunt community. Our cities borrow over $1 billion each day to build and maintain schools, parks, and other important civic projects, through a process that's been taken over by middlemen and global banks. Neighborly lets you invest directly in those projects, so you can do well financially by doing good for your community.
We'd love to hear more about what projects you want to see built in your community! This marketplace is being built for civic visionaries like you and we're working nonstop to curate projects that people care about most.
Also, a little more about why this matters for anyone interested.
@jase This is a greet idea as P3's become more popular and more troublesome. We're doing something slightly similar but strictly for restaurants. (@aplusk we should talk ;) ).
Infrastructure (including schools, etc.) is something that people who live in the community should be able to have a stake in, with more than just tax dollars.
Crowdfunding platforms like Patreon and Tilt have been used for community-based initiatives like this, some with great success (this self-funded private police force in Lower Rockridge dramatically reduced crime according to my conversations with @jjbeshara).
What common use cases have you seen (or expect) to emerge through Neighborly, @jase?
@rrhoover thank you for reaching out. Donation-based platforms like Tilt are very powerful for funding all kinds of change in communities especially at the prototype stage. Neighborly started out as a donation-based platform to get started, and helped dozens of communities raise millions of dollars for things like playgrounds and low-cost wireless broadband for low income communities. During that time we learned worlds about the potential and also the limitations of the donation model in funding public goods.
We're bringing some of the power of crowdfunding to the $3.6 Trillion municipal securities market. As a scale reference, people (who Wall Street call "retail") buy more municipal bonds every week than Kickstarter has raised in its entire history.
Use cases we're already seeing include new types of schools (some charter, others not), municipal wireless mesh networks, low income housing in high-priced markets, skate parks, community solar infrastructure and more.
Our hope in the long term is to make the giant, murky market that funds civic projects more accessible to both sides of the table, starting with investors, but eventually making it possible for civic visionaries to do nearly turnkey capital formation for civic projects we're not even thinking about today.
@jase@rrhoover I spent a couple of years looking at donation-based models for civic projects, and while I think they're awesome at solving, small-scale, uncontroversial issues, they haven't proven they can solve big, hard problems. That's the main reason I decided to join Neighborly last year. The long version: http://rodrigodavies.com/blog/20...
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I've known these guys for a long time and have been super impressed at how they've grown and executed over time. Really exciting opportunity to crack this market open and Jase and his team are the only people I've seen who have a real shot at it. Much love gentlemen.
@vladtenev wow that means the world coming from you! @robinhoodapp is a massive inspiration, in our minds the strongest example of how to #fintech. Appreciate the mention!
This is an awesome concept for those looking for ways to not only learn about investing, but also those who want there community to grow! Truly a win win situation @aplusk@jase
@joostschuur ya we were "honoured?" when Neighbourly came online in the UK a year after we started doing donation-based crowdfunding. They even liked our heart-shaped logo!
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