SAO PAULO — Buenos Aires-based crowd-funding site Ideame has acquired Brazilian company Movere, in a deal that may prompt more consolidation in this sector in Latin America.
One-year-old Ideame said it had acquired 100 percent of Movere’s shares in exchange for 15 percent of Ideame’s stock, valued at about $ 2.5 million. Movere, based in Rio de Janeiro, is thought to be Brazil’s second largest crowd-funding site.
While most Latin America’s crowd-funding sites are country-specific, Ideame is trying to become a top player for the entire region. It started at the same time in Argentina, Chile, and Mexico.
The Ideame acquisition comes as the popularity and success of Kickstarter in the United States has been fueling the development of similar sites throughout the world.
Kickstarter, backed by Union Square Ventures, recently said that it would expand to Britain this year but for now it operates only in the United States. While anyone in the world can fund projects on the site, only United States residents can create them because of the requirements of the payment provider, Amazon.com.
Kickstarter declined to comment if it had plans to expand to Latin America.
Ideame registered 117,000 total unique visitors in July, according to comScore data. (The company did not exist last July.) Brazil’s leading crowd-sourcing site, Catarse, notched 104,000 from 21,000 in July 2011. In comparison, Kickstarters’ Web traffic in Latin America grew to 194,000 last month, from 31,000 total unique visitors in July 2011.
Ideame was founded in 2011. One of the founders, Mariano Suarez Battan, previously founded Buenos Aires-based Three Melons, which was sold to Playdom in 2010 before The Walt Disney Company acquired Playdom. Another founder, Tiburcio de la Carcova co-founded Chile-based Atakama Labs, sold to Japan’s DeNA last year.
The two other founders are Juan Pablo Cappello, a Chilean lawyer, and Eduardo Costantini Jr., a filmmaker and son of the founder of the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, or Malba.
The company’s investors, who have raised more than $1 million, include the founders and Lawence Benenson, who is with Benenson Capital Partners and a trustee at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Others include Andy Kleinman, former head of Zynga’s Latin America operations, and Wences Casares, Lemon co-founder and iconic figure for Latin American entrepreneurs.
Movere said in its first 15 months it received more than $300,000 in funds pledged. Out of 143 projects, 60 reached their funding goal. The two companies combined have $420,000 pledged.
Ideame had also initially registered in Brazil, contemplating growing here solo. But Mr. Cappello said in an interview that they ultimately decided that “ Brazil is not a market that goes well when you don’t have a local presence.”
One challenge Ideame faces in becoming a regional crowd-funding player is integrating payment systems which vary from country to country.
For example, it uses Dineromail for Chile and Mexico, MercadoPago for Argentina, and MoIP for Brazil.
Rebecca Plofker, Ideame’s business development head said in an interview that it now has an agreement with PayPal for transactions across countries and 20 percent of their contributions currently use the service, a figure she expects to increase.
Article source: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/crowd-funding-merger-points-to-ambitions-in-latin-america/?partner=rss&emc=rss
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