Kevin O'Leary-Backed Startup Lets You Become a Venture Capitalist With $100

With over $650 million raised, The Kevin O’Leary-backed StartEngine has helped hundreds of thousands of everyday investors become venture capitalists with relatively small sums of money. The startup investing platform is already used by hundreds of thousands of investors investing millions into hundreds of different startups.

The site makes investing in startups easy, especially for new users. After you go on the platform, you can browse hundreds of startups backed by top venture capital firms, tens of thousands of retail investors, and billionaires like Bill Gates, Mark Cuban, and more.

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Heliogen Inc., for example, is a company that raised on StartEngine-owned SeedInvest, then received an investment from Bill Gates, then IPO’d. Mark Cuban invested in Virtuix, and the startup just finished a raise on StartEngine and raised over $1 million from retail investors.

Startups can be a lucrative diversification option, allowing investors to purchase shares in startups at their earliest stages. If those companies IPO or get bought out, investors often end up seeing a substantial payday. If you invested in Uber Technologies Inc. at its earliest stages, you would have returned 3,000,000% at IPO. Obviously, this isn’t the norm, but it goes to show what’s possible. But with 40 exits achieved on the platform to date, investors have certainly seen some of those gains.

While the minimum investment varies by campaign, raises go as low as $100. Meaning anyone can become a venture capitalist and begin diversifying into startups with an incredibly small amount of money.

Startups are a long-term, high-risk, high-reward investment option. This makes it attractive for investors tired of the traditional daily grind associated with public companies, or those with an eye for value investing. Typically, investors are encouraged to invest small amounts in a diversified portfolio of startups because many fail. But those that do IPO tend to hit big. With such low minimums, it's effectively open to any investor.

But investors through StartEngine might have liquidity options earlier than that due to “StartEngine Secondary,” a secondary market for trading startups owned by StartEngine. This effectively functions as a mini startup stock market for early investors needing liquidity before those IPO timelines. Not all startups list, but still a great ancillary service offered by the platform.

See more on startup investing from Benzinga.