Equity crowdfunding for business growth. The Midori case

Equity crowdfunding has now become an important resource for the entire economic system and the Italian industrial sector. For companies, it is an alternative way to access direct capital, grow and, above all, achieve new expansion targets. As in the case of Midori, an innovative SME that creates and sells energy analysis and smart metering services, which recently announced the closing of a €1.7 million round underwritten by FairConnect, a company specializing in the provision of connected insurance services for motorcycles and property controlled by the Palamon Capital Partners fund, Club degli Investitori, one of the leading business angel groups in Italy, and Club Acceleratori, an investment vehicle of Siamosoci, specializing in seed investments.

Midori was founded at the end of 2011 in I3P, the incubator of the Politecnico di Torino, by a team of experts and professionals in energy efficiency, ICT and social psychology, driven by the desire to bring technological innovation to the service of energy saving. The steps followed and that have led to this important milestone are different. Among them we find the fundraising round through equity crowdfunding promoted in 2018 on Mamacrowd, which led to raising 177 thousand euros from 50 crowd investors and investment vehicles such as Club Acceleratori. The investments raised through Mamacrowd gave the go-ahead for the validation of the Midori product on the market and investments to perfect the technology.

The recent entry of FairConnect SA, Club degli Investitori and Club Acceleratori in Midori's capital is a reconfirmation of the potential of the project and the business.

But what happened to the crowd partners?

As part of the operation, the crowd members, namely those who participated in the equity crowdfunding campaign in 2018, were given the opportunity to decide whether to exit the company, selling their stake to the new investors with a capital gain and thus realizing an exit, or to remain in the corporate structure, maintaining their status and continuing to follow the company's growth plan for the coming years with the support of the new capital and know-how of the new investors.

A case of success and future goals

The new milestone will allow Midori to grow further and bet on several fronts: from product consolidation in the utility market and go-to-market development in the insurance market thanks to FairConnect's positioning in this industry, to the joint creation, again with FairConnect, of new solutions for the smart-home market, both private and commercial, as well as the strengthening of the team to increase the technical capacity of data analysis.

The Midori case shows how equity crowdfunding can be a useful tool to successfully close seed rounds and attract capital for the growth of your company.

Mamacrowd makes it possible for many companies to take this path. Mamacrowd has always tried to select the best of Italian industry for its community. And for this reason it will continue to tell success stories like Midori's.

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