This week saw a variety of small news from new offerings, to new funding, to new features. Take a look at all the alternative investing stories from the week down below.
FranShares
FranShares announced on X (😬) that their inaugural TNT Franchise Fund was finally open for non-accredited investors.
This development has been a long-time coming. After initially planning to launch to non-accredited investors last year, FranShares had to start with an accredited-only offering while they continued to work through various legal and compliance aspects.
Alto
This week Alto announced via a series of emails an update to their pricing model. There will now be a flat 0.45% fee, based on the value of the account’s investments. There is also a minimum fee – $50 and a maximum fee – $2000. The pricing changes will be applied on the next payment cycle.
Additionally, the FAQ clarifies that members on the new billing/payment structure will no longer pay per-deal investment fees.
Whether this is a good or bad change mostly depends on who you are. There previously used to be two tiers of accounts with different fees. For newer, smaller accounts the fees should now be much lower. For large accounts, the fees will likely be higher.
Vint
In an email to investors, Vint announced a couple of changes to the platform.
First, they will be enforcing a stricter requirement for password complexity. Passwords are now required to be at least 12 characters in length. Users may be asked to update their password on their next login.
Second, they announced that Dwolla would be used to handle ACH payments in the future. The Vint team indicated this change would help to offer automatic deposits and wallet features on the platform in the future.
Perhaps after auto-deposits, we’ll see auto-investing options as well.
Kingscrowd
Kingscrowd announced that they would be hosting a demo day on August 23rd. You can register here to see pitches and join Q&A from Avadain, Build Club, and Legion M.
Inc 5000
A number of companies announced they had made the Inc 5000 list of companies that are building the future. We saw announcements from StartEngine, Groundfloor, and Roofstock.
The list is built based on revenue growth. This means that some of the companies in the alternative investment space are not just growing, but are among the fastest growing companies in America.
Republic
We have always felt that Republic was the equity crowdfunding platform closest to web3, crypto, and digital assets. So it is not surprising to see this week’s announcement of the Republic crypto wallet.
ANote Music
In a series of tweets about ANote Music, the Algorand Foundation announced that they had participated in a recent capital raise for the company.
Based on reporting from Digital Music News, it looks like ANote was able to raise €3.3 Million in funding. The company also announced that they had received grant funding from Luxembourg’s Luxinnovation to help further expand the platform.
Kickfurther
This week, Kickfurther announced some enhancements to their platform. It is now much easier to see whether payments are off track, as well as the real vs expected repayments over time.
