BERLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Indiegogo, the world’s largest global crowdfunding platform, today announces a partnership with Stiftung Entrepreneurship, a German foundation to foster entrepreneurship, and Google to launch the Gründer-Garage initiative – an online competition for German-speaking entrepreneurs to promote innovation and financing through the Internet. This is Indiegogo’s first international competition and the first crowdfunding partnership by Google for Entrepreneurs - Google’s global effort to support startups and entrepreneurs around the world.
Indiegogo’s open and global platform empowers anyone, anywhere to launch a funding campaign at any time, for anything – creative, cause, or entrepreneurial – and since its launch in 2008, Indiegogo has helped individuals launch campaigns in every country around the world. The Gründer-Garage competition supports Indiegogo’s mission to empower startups and small businesses to raise funds and generate market validation for their ideas.
Gründer-Garage is an innovative start-up competition for candidates with venture ideas from all sectors. Candidates will be offered training materials and coaching provided by Stiftung Entrepreneurship to develop their idea into a solid business plan and then will seek their own capital through self-administered campaigns on global crowdfunding site, Indiegogo. Indiegogo’s gogofactor – a proprietary merit-based formula which tracks campaign activity – will be part of determining the winning campaigns, and Google will match campaigns that successfully reach their funding goal until 150,000 € in prize money is depleted. The three partner companies will publicly recognize these campaigns at the Entrepreneurship Summit in Berlin in October.
In addition to already empowering individuals around the world to create a campaign for their creative, cause or entrepreneurial endeavor, Indiegogo is building out its international platform, beginning with Germany. To coincide with the launch of this partnership, Indiegogo for the first time will roll out a localized version of www.Indiegogo.com in the German language and will be broadening its funding and payments options beyond USD, to include Euros for participants of this competition.
“This is an exciting opportunity to empower some of the best creative and business talent,” said Danae Ringelmann, Co-Founder of Indiegogo. “As the world’s leading crowdfunding platform, we’ve enabled people to launch campaigns from every country around the world, and we’re thrilled to partner with Google and Stiftung Entrepreneurship to empower German-speaking entrepreneurs from all around the world to not only raise funds, but gain market validation from their own community and future customer-base.”
“Google began as a startup in a garage and we hope to empower the next generation of entrepreneurs to build and scale businesses and be successful online. We are excited about the opportunity here to team with Indiegogo, Stiftung Entrepreneurship and the broader community to support creative entrepreneurs in surfacing great ideas and moving them forward,” said Mary Himinkool, Google's Head of Global Entrepreneurship Outreach.
“Entrepreneurship offers an opportunity for unconventional ideas and views. It aims at achieving success through transcending established structures, and it attracts artists, mavericks and all those who formerly were marginal to the business world. The economic and cultural development of a society depends on business initiatives that apply economic, social and artistic creativity to existing problems. Through Gründer-Garage we hope to inspire people of all walks of life to join the world of entrepreneurship,” said Dr. Günter Faltin, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Head of Stiftung Entrepreneurship, Berlin.
About Indiegogo
Indiegogo is the world's leading crowdfunding platform, empowering anyone, anywhere, at anytime, to raise funds for anything. Since launching in January 2008, Indiegogo has enabled people to launch campaigns from every country around the world. With millions of dollars distributed globally each month across the site, Indiegogo is democratizing the way people raise funds for any project - creative, entrepreneurial or cause-related. Indiegogo is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in Los Angeles and New York. For more information, visit www.indiegogo.com and follow us at www.twitter.com/indiegogo, www.facebook.com/indiegogo, and http://plus.ly/indiegogo.
About Google
Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.
About Stiftung Entrepreneurship
The Entrepreneurship Foundation was founded in 2001 to get more people interested in the idea of founding a business - even those for whom the entrepreneurial world is unfamiliar. Entrepreneurship represents a creative and daring activity. Special cultural conditions, role models, and attitudes are necessary to support entrepreneurial initiatives and to make the entrepreneurial attitude more understandable. Entrepreneurship offers the opportunity to work with unconventional ideas and perspectives, and thereby to successfully participate in the economy and to break up established structures. This understanding of entrepreneurship goes beyond previous understandings: entrepreneurship as an open affair that welcomes creative action. For more information, visit www.entrepreneurship.de