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We've been meeting with lots of startups and investors to learn more about how we can get more startups started in Louisville, and here's one of the problems we've consistently heard.

The best startup companies can't find investors in Louisville, so they look outside of Louisville.

Then, often, when they find investors outside of Louisville, the investors move them to a different city. When the company is successful and cashes out, all the profit and entrepreneurial talent leaves the Louisville area, which destroys our entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Why is this happening?

For one thing, our city doesn't have a huge pool of angel investors or early stage venture investors. We're not like Silicon Valley with lots of cashed out billionaires willing to write million dollar checks on an idea.

But, in our area, the best startups are advised to look for investors with a $50,000 minimum investment. What happens? They don't find those investors, so they look outside of Louisville, find investors, and end up moving away.

So how do we fix these problems? We make it easy for more people to invest in startups.

One way we'll do this on the Metro Startup Launcher website is by using WeFunds. WeFunder.com will set up a small corporation (a WeFund), which can accept up to 99 investors with minimum investments as low as $100. That corporation then invests in a startup company, and the WeFund shows up as one investor on the startup company's books.

This will allow local startups to raise capital from multiple local investors and stay in Louisville. So how do we find these investors?

1. First, we build a large pool potential investors on Metro Startup Launcher. Here's how we do it:

a. Provide fantastic educational content to get investors excited about safely investing in startups with the highest potential for excellent returns.

b. Run ads on Facebook, LinkedIn and other media to drive traffic to Metro Startup Launcher content.

c. How do we pay for ads? We accept donations from local businesses and individuals to fund more and more ads to bring in more and more investors.

2. Provide a password protected section on the Metro Startup website for active, growing startups to connect with accredited investors and teach the entrepreneurs to set up WeFunds.

The Louisville metro area has 1.3 million people. As more of these people invest in startups, more startups get started and more stay in Louisville. As these companies become successful, the profits get returned to investors in the Louisville area, our local wealth grows, and more and money goes into metro area startups.

This is one of the ways we get more startups started, increase jobs, and increase wealth for our entire metro area.

Help us get the word out by donating or just passing on this video to anyone you can!

Thank you!