Startup Idea Every Day #7: Local Brand Investing Hub

This is the seventh post in my series, "Startup Idea Every Day", where I offer a new idea for a startup every day, for 31 days (January 2014).

This is an idea that was inspired by a combination of sites such as KickStarter, Flippa and AngelList, as well as my local go-to coffee shops. I was sitting in a locally owned coffee shop in Santa Barbara, where I had just paid $2.65 for an americano, and I thought to myself

"Wow, the coffee tastes incredible, the people working here care about the customers, the employees take pride in their work, the atmosphere is fantastic, and I didn't get raked over the coals for what otherwise would have essentially been a milkshake."

At this point, I was imagining how incredibly well a company like this could do if they had the resources to open up two more storefronts. This is when I realized, if I had the money and the free time, I would invest heavily in this (local) brand, which is why my seventh startup idea this year is a investment website that is geared towards local brands. The goal is to promote the dream of small-business ownership, retain local cultural influences, and increase the quality of goods and services.

Why would people want to invest in local brands? There are a lot of great reasons to invest in small, local companies. For one, local businesses offer a better connection to the investment. Getting to invest in a small business that you understand and maybe already have a relationship with is safer because you have a better judge of how the ROI will play out, and you have much, much more influence on the direction of the company, but it would be safer than investing in a startup, which as we know have incredibly high failure rates :(.

The greatest challenge to overcome here would be to distinguish yourself from the million crowd-funding, micro-loan, get-money-get-paid type of sites that already exist. Building a brand that defines itself differently is easily in the top 5 challenges facing most startups.

Of all of the ideas that I've posted so far, this is one that I really hope to see come into fruition in the next couple years. There are a huge number of small businesses that have a great company culture, a great product, and with a little money and guidance could be turned into serious moneymakers, without compromising the quality of the product or the integrity of the company.