–Esther Bertram, Founder of In Vegans We Trust
Crowdfund platform : Wefunder
“As a startup founder it’s gratifying when the crowd invests because it means they support our mission and believe they can make a profit with us.”
Crowdfund platform : Wefunder
“Vegan Investing Club was a rapid response team for our funding needs during early 2022. Their investors helped to quickly push us past our funding plateau to a successful Reg CF Campaign. VIC was the solution that we needed right when we needed it most!”
Crowdfund platform : Wefunder
“Club members were great they helped push our Crowdfund over the million dollar mark.”
Crowdfund platform : Wefunder
“Once customers taste our delicious vegan foods they fall in love and Club members understood this because they invested to help more people enjoy plant-based.”
Crowdfund platform : Wefunder
“We’re strongly mission driven and the members of this Club responded by investing in our Crowdfund. We’d certainly do it again.”
Crowdfund platform : Republic
“Reaching a large community of vegans who get our mission and product makes a huge difference. We'll use this Club again!!.”
Crowdfund platform : StartEngine
"Mark, the founder of the Club, came to see a PowerBloc system at our latest installation and had a chance to speak with the customer..."
Crowdfund platform : Republic
"We love that investors from the Club invested and we expect them to become some of our most passionate customers."
Source: Forks Over Knives Film
Phase 1 – From 2020 to late 2021, 11,676 members like you joined our Club to be on the list to get announcements of the first vegan companies.
Phase 2 – In late 2021 we began announcing one company a month. The response from members was so positive – the vegan entrepreneurs reported raising significant amounts of money from Club members.
The model seemed to be working: “a free Club of vegan advocates investing small amounts together.”
“But the question was “could it scale to help hundreds of vegan companies every year and really ramp up accelerating the vegan economy?”
By the end of 2022 we had the answer. The membership had grown past 20,000 and our Club had invested significantly in 10 companies. This model works. Now the founder and his advisors realized it’s time to scale up membership into the hundreds of thousands or millions and accelerate the vegan economy even faster.
Phase 3 – During 2023 the founder’s vision is to rapidly increase membership and announce many more vegan companies. We could reach 100,000 members worldwide and help 25 companies!
Who knows how far this can go? People all over the world are waking up and realizing that if most people eat even 10% more vegan this will save us all. And the good news is that everyone can be part of this change with a chance to profit from the expanding vegan economy.
So maybe the founder’s vision of a global Club of a million vegan investors will manifest – with each member building their own private diversified vegan retirement portfolio. This would help hundreds and hundreds of vegan startups.
And when we help the vegan economy, we heal the world.
We’re a group of vegan entrepreneurs and social impact investors who believe that the world needs more plant-based companies to lead the charge in environmentally and ethically-responsible ways. Our vision is to unite like-minded investors from around the world to build a vegan economy through equity Crowdfunding campaigns, regardless of how much or how little individuals are able to invest. There’s power in numbers and the most powerful way to create a vegan economy is through unified action.
Mark has been innovating to make the world better most of his career. He founded the Vegan Investing Club to accelerate the vegan economy by tapping the amazing potential of Crowdfunding.
He hosted and produced the Crowdfunding World Summit promoting this idea to 12,000 attendees through interviews with 75 speakers including Senators, regulators and international industry leaders. Later he lobbied the SEC on rules governing this new law.…
He created a food company making ready-to-eat vegan meals so delicious that even non-vegans enjoy them with a plan to match meals to customer DNA for maximum health benefits. He funded a film showing six diabetics reversing their disease in 30 days on a vegan diet: “Simply Raw”. Seen by millions this led him to make a dvd series: “Raw For Life” with 30 vegan celebrities teaching the vegan lifestyle.
He created DirectIPO, one of the earliest sites for raising money online long before the Crowdfunding laws were passed.
He produced a solar energy exposition at the University of Denver and this led him to become a green business advocate. This was also when he stopped eating animals.
He has spoken at the Silicon Valley Crowdfund Conference and the Global Crowdfunding Expo. He’s been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Business Week; Fortune. He had a long career as a licensed investment broker and before that as a real estate broker.
Mark is semi-retired and lives between Maryland and Lima, Peru. He loves meeting people and any kind of physical fitness: bicycle riding, hiking, yoga, the gym, swimming. He’ll go anywhere for a meal with other vegans. He enjoys long form podcasts on biology, neurochemistry, and spirituality. He and his fiancé live together near the cliffs above the Pacific ocean. They enjoy preparing vegan meals for friends. For the first time he lives with cats – he’s sure he prefers dogs.
