OKWave Invests In WESYM, Crowd Funding, To Take 14.8% / Venture Now

Q&A site operator, OKWave closed a capital and business alliance with Dream 4, a crowd funding site, WESYM operator. OKWave gains 14.8% of its stocks by allocation of new shares.

With the alliance, both plan to collaboration including service linkage, mutual sales support and sharing information and cooperation in global expansion.

Dream 4 was founded on May 10th, 2011. WESYM allows contributors to support fund-raisers challenging their dreams such as music, movies, and sports with mileage points like T Point or Rakuten Super Point. In addition to Japanese, it is available in English, Chinese (simplified and traditional), and Korean to aim to develop crowd funding service connecting Japan and overseas.

Venture Now 9/24/2013 [jp]

memo

• Crowd funding is gradually becoming popular, but it seems the service providers are increasing on even higher rate than actual users. OKWave has a large user base, which will be a big support for WESYM to acquire new users. For OKWave, the partnership seems to be a smart way to judge if it should launch or how it should be involved with a crowd funding service utilizing existing user base.
• http://wesym.com/