The equity crowdfunding market is growing rapidly and there are many challenges for investors to sift through the ever growing number of deals and platforms marketing those deals. This issue is likely to get worse as the market grows. Lustro is helping investors research deals more efficiently. Diversification is also critical for investors to reduce risk and a platform that helps them identify more attractive opportunities supports this investment principal. The Contributor model where investors contribute to the diligence is the only model that makes sense long term in this industry given the shear number of deals happening at any one time. Quantitative analysis does not do the entire job because many of the companies in these markets have no operating history. We need to leverage the power of the crowd!

Additional capital will give us more time to execute the plan. Adding users and Contributors is critical to our long term revenue plan. In order to succeed, we need to implement various programs to encourage user growth and engagement including promotion through social media and other channels, but also through providing a highly value added and user friendly experience on our site.

We believe there are a wide range of ways the platform will make money after the user base has been built. Some examples are pay per click fees/referral fees from platforms for passing investors to deals, referral fees from platforms for referring founders, paid membership fees for premium services, fees for portfolio monitoring services which allow users to view all of their investments in one place, data analytics for institutional/government entities who want data on the industry, general advertising for companies that want exposure to investors such as marketing firms, financial planners/accountants, geo-targeted advertising, deal promotion fees paid by issuers, new platform promotion for newer platforms looking to expand their investor base, listing fees from the M&A platform introduction. In addition, there may be other, longer-term opportunities to leverage the rating system and create model portfolios for investors.

There are several competitors who recognize this opportunity. The largest is KingsCrowd who has raised money through crowdfunding in the past. We think we understand the desired user interface better and the need for crowdsourced diligence. We also think that more services need to be free to build a user base and that many investors are not willing to pay for many services at this point, but the value of users is still there without paid services through the value of the data, advertising and referrals of users to platforms.

The platform is fully operational with many features live and many ready for launch. The key now is growing the user base and attracting users who want to contribute content.

The equity crowdfunding market is growing rapidly and it is becoming more and more difficult for investors to monitor investment opportunities. Aggregation is a proven business model in highly fragmented markets as you can see with companies like Kayak or Travelocity. It is simply easier and more efficient to go to one site than each funding portal. In addition, leveraging the power of the crowd to help people do better diligence is something we hope can help quality deals rise to the top and help investors avoid deals doomed to failure.

Lustro is a diligence-focused equity crowdfunding and alternative asset aggregator that gathers deals from various funding portals and makes them easily available in one, organized platform for people to research.