Friends and family are often the biggest supporters of seed-stage businesses. But, offline investing often requires investors to invest rather large sums (£10,000 to £25,000 minimum) to make the legal paperwork worthwhile. Unless an entrepreneur has wealthy friends and family, this can be very difficult to raise.

One of the main benefits of equity crowdfunding is that it makes it possible to raise smaller amounts of investment from friends and family – allowing them to more easily experience the rewards that come from investing in these startup companies.

This month, we’ve already seen the fourth Seedrs startup reach 100% of their investment amount. These successes have provided us…

It may seem like an odd choice to be launching an investment platform in Europe these days. Granted, for the moment Seedrs is limited to the UK, which is somewhat insulated from the most extreme distresses of the Eurozone. But the economy is in far from ideal condition even here, and and in any event we make no secret of our ambition to expand to the Continent as soon as we can. Are we crazy, or is there method in the madness?