Minneapolis Startup: Wahooly Giving Away Equity At Chicago Tech Week 2012 VIDEO INTERVIEW

Wahooly has had a lot of buzz lately. Their model which has been described by many as Kickstarter meets Klout, encourages social rockstars to mobilize and support startups for an equity stake.  As serial entrepreneurs, Wahooly co-founders Dana Severson, and Connor Hood know that the hardest thing for startups to do is gain traction, especially startups “everywhere else (that’s one reason we’re even here).

So what is this novel model and how does it work?

Well Wahooly takes social media influencers who sign up and presents 200 startups to the influencer per year. If in 12 months you decide to “invest” your social media influence in each of the 200 startups, then you’ll actually own an equity stake in all 200 of those startups. The best part is you’re leveraging your influence, not your dollars.


Startups who use Wahooly set up testing groups between 5k and 8k people. Up to 8% equity is set aside for this group. The group of influencers are asked to “Promote, Improve and Engage” and also give guidance and feedback in exchange for the equity. You may think that 5k to 8k people with Wahooly being a startup themselves, is a lot. Well Wahooly already has 30,000 influencers signed up in their capped beta. They also have a pretty hefty wait list brewing.

As for startups, there are 450 or so signed up to date.

We got to talk with an enthusiastic Severson at Chicago TechWeek. Naturally because of our mutual love of startups “everywhere” we hit it off and Wahooly was one of the first companies on our list to see at TechWeek. Their booth was buzzing though so it took hours to get some face time with Severson. Below is that video interview.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Linkage:

Find out more about Wahooly here

See more of our Chicago Tech Week coverage here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more stories from “everywhere else”