What is EQUI?

EQUI is an ethereum based venture capital platform.

What does this really mean?

This means that EQUI allows tokenholders to buy stakes of future profit from early stage emerging companies. Venture capitalism is usually reserved for individuals and firms with large amount of capital. EQUI is bringing venture capital to the people by creating a platform that allows everyone to trade EQUI tokens for stakes (and profit) in companies.

How is owning stake different than participating in an ICO?

What the EQUI platform is doing is vastly different than hosting ICOs for projects. When you participate in an ICO your money is not being invested into a company, it is being used to purchase a token for its utility.

EQUI is more comparable to an IPO service in that you are purchasing the right to future profits if the company succeeds.

What makes EQUI different than an IPO is that the projects that token holders can stake are not yet at the public stock offering stage. The platform will work with projects in the seed stage, early stage or in the Series A and B growth rounds.

A second major difference is that staking EQUI does not give token holders a stake or ownership of the company, it only gives them the right to share in the future profits.

Why would companies sell stake in their profit?

Companies do this all the time for various reasons and the reasons differ based on the stage of development for a project.

• Seed Stage - a quick boost in capital is needed to take them from an idea to a working project.
• Early Stage - Company has a working project but would rather sell stake than acquire debt to finance growth.
• Growth Stage - Companies are willing to sell stake to acquire capital for large scale expansion, customer acquisition and experienced advisors.

How does this work?

The EQUI ecosystem will consist of multiple players including:

Projects
The benefit for a project to use the EQUI platform is that they do not have to subject themselves to the gauntlet of modern day venture capitalism. Many good projects fall to the wayside because of the nature of the VC world. This is bringing crowdfunding to the VC world, decentralizing it away from the hotbeds of funding like Silicon Valley.

Token holders
Token holders have three options with their tokens. They can hold them, invest (stake) them or trade them on exchanges.

• Investors - When a token holder chooses to invest EQUI tokens into a project the tokens will enter a smart contract. The smart contract binds the token holder to the project giving them rights to 75% of the net profits. The smart contract also allows the EQUI tokens to be sold for FIAT in order to fund the projects. In essence token holders are trading EQUI for the right to future profits (if any).

• Holders - If token holders choose to hold their EQUI tokens on the EQUI platform they will receive loyalty rewards in the form of ETH. In order to receive rewards holders cannot trade or move EQUI from the platform. Increasing token supply by 5% per year will occur to facilitate the loyalty program.

• Traders - Traders rely on price fluctuations of the token to make profits on exchanges. Traders can receive loyalty rewards or profit stakes.

EQUI Surplus
The surplus fund is generated from token sale money and will be between $0 and $65 million. The surplus fund size depends on the amount of funds raised in the token sale. If $5 million is raised there will be no surplus. If $10 million is raised the surplus will be $2.850 million. If the max $80 million target is reached the surplus will grow to $65 million.

Surplus funds will be used by the team to invest into projects. Using the surplus fund will allow the team to top up projects to ensure they have enough capital or to provide extra seed money to attract larger projects to the platform.

How will I make money?

If a project is profitable that you invested in you will receive 75% of the net profits. All payouts will be paid in ETH for both investors and loyalty rewards.

Am I guaranteed to make money in a project?

No. This is venture capitalism and many projects may not succeed. Venture capitalist hope to get an early stake in the next Google, Facebook or Snapfish but sometimes end up with something that never catches on.

If you stake your tokens to a project that does not make profit you will lose your EQUI.

What is the utility of EQUI?

As we've discussed in the article the utility of the token is:

1. Investing in projects.
2. Holding to receive loyalty rewards.
3. Trading.

What about the team?

The team is composed mainly of entrepreneurs, VC veterans, and marketing experts. The development, software and tech team is light offering only one Head of Development.

The founders Doug Barrowman and Baroness Michelle Mone are well know for those in Britain and Scotland. Doug is a serial entrepreneur, Venture Capitalist and is the founder of The Knox Group of Companies

Team member linkedIn profiles not provided on the projects website:

Doug Barrowman - Founder
Baroness Mone - Co-Founder
Andrei Karpushonak - Head of Development
Mark Pearson - Advisor
Duncan MacInnes - Advisor

Overall

This project is taking a unique approach to crowd funding venture capitalist projects. The idea of staking tokens for a percentage of profit (not equity in a company) is a different take than many current cryptocurrency models.

If you are interested in participating in early stage VC then you should conduct further research on this project and see if it fits with your interests.

For more information visit:

EQUI Website || Telegram || Whitepaper || Bitcointalk Announcement || Bounty