Chet Bowling, one of the directors of the crowdfunding initiative Slingshot, believes that Monday’s launch at Moray House in Georgetown can become a transformative force for entrepreneurship in Guyana. He says that what Slingshot seeks to do is to provide ambitious but financially-strapped Guyanese with creative and potentially lucrative business ideas, with a vehicle that can circumvent financial challenges, long the biggest stumbling block to the realization of numerous entrepreneurial ambitions.
Since December, Slingshot Funding, has provided a virtual platform that allows entrepreneurs and organizations to share their business ideas and development projects, and connect with potential donors and supporters.
Whereas entrepreneurial ventures that depend on collective initiative have sometimes been known to fail for want of individual discipline, Bowling says Slingshot is not in the business of offering giveaways. Beneficiaries, he says, will only get out of the programme as much as they are prepared to put into it in terms of the viability of their projects and the extent to which they are prepared to adhere to the orthodoxies associated with sound business practices in terms of discipline and accountability.
In an interview with Stabroek Business earlier this week, Bowling said that the launch of the Slingshot crowdfunding initiative will help provide ambitious and inventive Guyanese with a viable alternative gateway to the realization of long-stifled entrepreneurial ambitions.
In a nutshell, Slingshot embraces capital accumulation for investment by utilizing both traditional and contemporary communication tools to tap into the a range of sources including family, relatives and friends as well as discerning outsiders on the lookout for a worthwhile investment opportunity. The sources of funding may well be separated by considerable distance but can be brought together by technology in pursuit of a shared business interest. In effect, it gets around what has been the mainstream approach of knocking on the doors of traditional risk-averse lending agencies, including the commercial banking sector to find more diverse and forward-looking groups.
A release issued by Slingshot prior to Monday’s launch disclosed that it would have been launched with eight projects in sectors that include music, recycling, craft, design and services. Outside of those, the release said, Slingshot “supports and welcomes projects of all types – from green projects to film and theatre, technology, creative arts projects, agriculture and development campaigns.”
The release said the “owners” of the project are “youth and women who aspire for greatness and want to positively contribute to society while developing themselves professionally and financially.” One of the challenges for persons who benefit from the attention of Slingshot, Bowling said, is that their operations will come under the scrutiny of a wide and varied cross-section of stakeholders including people who are themselves experienced in business and who have a vested interest in the success of the initiative.
Echoing the Slingshot media release, Bowling says the initiative is anxious to move past the idea that this is just another sales pitch. He believes that it could be a game-changer, an “opportunity to positively impact lives” and, Bowling adds, “add significant value to communities across the country which, in the past, have had difficulties accumulating capital to move ahead with what may have been sound business ideas.”
Bowling believes that once the crowdfunding underpinning of Slingshot takes hold in Guyana it will have the effect of providing a challenge to the traditional approach to raising capital for business ventures. He points out that while, traditionally, potential entrepreneurs seeking to raise capital to start a business were required to engage a limited pool of often skeptical institutions – banks, angel investors, and venture capital firms – the crowdfunding option allows for the targeting of a single more responsive platform. Here, he says, large sums can be invested in exchange for equity and without the bureaucratic hassle that obtains while engaging the traditional lending agencies.
Bowling’s animated interest in seeking to have Slingshot ‘put down roots’ in Guyana has to do with what he says is the suitability of the crowdfunding approach for giving life to the range of potential startups and in effect to the overall national objective of taking development to people “in their communities.” Noting that it is often the practice that many potential lucrative initiatives die for want of funding Bowling says that with crowdfunding it is not just a matter of being able to dip into a wider pool but also the ability to access more flexible fund-raising options.
Bowling says that what animates him is the types of projects that appear to be gravitating towards what Slingshot offers – he talks about small and micro business initiatives in areas that include natural products and lime juice production; initiatives, he says, that seek to lift individuals and communities out of poverty. It is the potentially transformative effect of Slingshot at that level that has caught Bowling’s interest. “We really are about catapulting those types of initiatives to the next level,” he says.
Bowling says that last Monday’s launch of Slingshot was simply a precursor to the hard work that lies ahead in an effort to draw more participants to the crowdfunding concept. The initiative, Bowling disclosed, has already secured the services of emtec, a marketing and technology company in an effort to spread the Slingshot crowdfunding message. “There is,” he says, good reason for us to be optimistic.”
