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Is there any value to Microcosm in acting as an archive for now defunct sites? I'm thinking in particular about a site like serpentineroad.com, which was for years an active community but is now about to close. Would be nice to think that there is still some value in keeping such sites alive, but I wonder is there a commercial rationale for it?

Seedrs now over 200% funded. Well, at least that puts any business viability concerns I had regarding them to bed. Seems like they could just open the spigot any time and let the cash flow in!

You could control who owns your shares through tag along/drag along provisions, although I'm not sure what Seedrs have in their default agreements. For future, larger rounds, you could make it a provision of the agreement that any sale of shares is subject to tag along provisions but, depending on how its drafted, that could kill secondary trading in the shares altogether.

For the Seedrs capital raising, they gave investors >25k the option to hold their shares directly, which presumably those investing that much chose to do, so they obviously have flexibility in handling both nominee and directly-held shares.

So I was going to post about Secure To Share to laugh at it's ridiculous marketing claptrap--post-quantum encryption, ha!

Turns out, though, it is a thing, and they actually look quite interesting. Though I'm not convinced by their robovoice screencast video, and the apps that they do have in the app store have never been reviewed/rated, so it's a good bet they've not sold many.

Week after, and it's Paris. A cycle ride for charity, to help children read.

Won't you think of the children?!

https://believe.in/fundraising/DavidKitchen/319

£251 to go, and the deadline is today. How about all of us who invested in the Microcosm second round make a donation of just 1% of the amount we invested? Even without the Seedrs only heavy hitters, that should be more than enough to make the target!

They haven't sent out any e-mails about it yet--I just noticed when I was on the site.

I'm looking forward to piling all my shares in a heap and diving into them.

Seedrs says round two was funded today... Congrats!

PixelPin got name-checked in the Economist, which is the first time I've seen any mention of a Seedrs-funded company in the wild for reasons unrelated to fund raising.

Put it like this, a VC sat in a meeting room with Matt and I this morning, and didn't know about the Seedrs raise, nor this forum. He asked us, "What can I do, how can I help?". As in, can you open the goddamn door and let me in.

So how do you get on their radar then? Word of mouth through advisors/other VCs?

either we would pass the nominee responsibility to someone else who we believed would represent your best interests or, if that wasn't possible, you would just hold the shares directly as a shareholder.

I actually went off and read the nominee agreement (!) and I see where you can appoint an alternate nominee. Water under the bridge now, I guess, but a belt and braces approach would have been to give investors the right to appoint an alternate nominee and/or take direct ownership of the shares in the event Seedrs defaults on its obligations etc.

No doubt none of this will ever matter, but good fences make good neighbours etc.

Ah, I have the go live button.

What does it look like?

Couldn't agree more. And that's precisely why we are re-designing those pages. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks we will be able to allow you to see the multiple Microcosm rounds (including live ones) aggregated under Microcosm.

Carlos, Frank et al,

While you're at it, it would be useful see more granular detail on the Your Investments page, e.g.:

• How many shares I own in the various companies/rounds etc.
  
• A (suitably caveated) "value" of your investments would be nice, particularly where companies have had subsequent rounds.
  
• The nominee agreement is accessible from the account page, but I'd instinctively look for it on the investments page.
  
  
  

How will you compare investments made in different rounds if showing companies consolidated? I.e. 1k invested in Microcosm round one is ≈ 4k in round two. Makes later investors look "bigger" than earlier ones with the same or higher ownership % (although, obviously they are bigger on a committed capital basis).

Separately, is there established law, and/or have you received advice, on what happens to us, as investors in Microcosm via Seedrs as nominee, if Seedrs the firm were to fail? I know you are well capitalised etc., but what's the worst case scenario?

David, how much of Microcosm's revenue do you anticipate coming from affiliate links versus your other sources of revenue? Given that affiliate links rely on third parties, it's possible that they could be disrupted by something else, which Microcosm might or might not be able to monetise. (I can't imagine what, mind you, but such is the nature of disruption.)

We are selling ourselves to you, investors and users, to site admins, and to VCs.

Because the audiences overlap, and the communications overlap.

Where possible (e.g the Seedrs listing), you can tailor the message to the audience. Where that's not possible, you should target your communication to your most important constituents. In time, I expect this will be existing (and potential) forum admins but perhaps it's still investors/VCs for now?

"Communities, reimagined".

Is that magical enough?

If you're going to go big, why restrict yourself to synonyms of discussion board?

Your Internet, reimagined
Your interests, online

Bit salesey - though might work for a larger target audience when you have more scale.

For the Seedrs listing, it might be better to go with something more descriptive:

Connecting like-minded folk online

Though the Seedrs strap line looks like it can be quite long, so perhaps a padded out version of the infographic text?

As others have said--and I think you have concluded?--I don't think you should reference tumblr in your strap line as it instantly puts you in the shadow of that company. It served its purpose, but it's time to move on.

Well... this is the graphic going at the top of the listing.

This is very helpful--definitely the best way to get your point across succinctly.

However it doesn't distinguish between points (you and your interests) and vectors (ways to engage). In addition, what are you engaging with, communities, or your interests? In practice, it's communities, but they only serve as a locus for your interests. Given that "community" is ambiguous, I'd drop it in favour of "interests" only.

Semantically, I think something like the following works better:
Connecting You
To your interests
In ways that matter

But this is harder to show graphically--the best I can think of in 2D is having "you" on the left, "interests" on the right and "ways of engaging" in the middle but with the text centered below so that it reads in the right order, but it's not elegant. I can see it making for a nifty animated pencil illustration though, perhaps taking cues from parts of the video Apple used to introduce their developers' conference (e.g. from around 50 seconds in):

video

If I try to edit my proifile name to one that already exists, I get the unpretty error:

The comparison with twitter is interesting. The turmoil they are currently going through will, no doubt, end up as a Harvard Business School case study on the difficulties of monetising success online. In particular, it is interesting how the independent developers that were so integral to Twitter's early success are now a risk to their business because they stand between twitter (and its advertisers) and the users.

How is Microcosm different? A sponsored tweet can be ignored by a twitter client. Similarly, what's to stop a Microcosm client "capturing" an affiliate link and replacing it with its own affiliate link?

booze

Ardbeg, but who's counting?

Remember y'all, it's now in "standby period", where you can still invest if you have funds in your account, for the next seven days. For those who missed the cut-off today, you should go ahead and invest anyway as if anyone withdraws (doesn't get their money in on time/gets cold feet) their shares will be allocated to those on standby. If you don't ultimately get in, you can just withdraw your money, so no loss...

And I sincerely hope we don't get a chance to invest!

Assuming this is fully subscribed tonight, it's got to be worth a decent chunk of PR for Microcosm (and Seedrs).

Shouldn't you ring a bell or something to signal the market is open?

Tom from Seedrs is going to be on this thread very shortly

Hi Tom.

Couple of questions about Seedrs:

You hold investors' shares as a bare trustee. What does that mean if Seedrs were to fail as a company? How are we protected if Seedrs files for bankruptcy?

What happens if there is a vote or voluntary corporate action relating to the shares? Do you take instruction from us and act accordingly, or do you vote on our behalf without reference to us?

I note that some Seedrs staff invest in your startups. Presumably Seedrs insiders will refrain from investing if it looks like an offer may be oversubscribed so as to avoid any conflicts?

I should have called the company Milo Minderbinder Enterprises.

What is the company actually called? I couldn't find any related Microcosms at Companies House.

Regarding reserving usernames, can we only reserve our LFGSS username, or can we request another (instead--I know we can only get one). I've rather grown out of EnfantTerrible...

i believe that if some were given information not publicly available it may be seen as insider dealing which is a serious offence.

Won't be "insider dealing" as these are not (yet? IPO?) publicly-traded securities. But that's not to say Microcosm wouldn't be breaking some FSA rules on equal treatment of investors or something like that.