Partnership Announcement: A&E + RocketHub = Crowdfunding Goes Big
Ray Czekanski
Member since: March 15, 2011
A Little About Me
I was raised to always help family and friends when they were in need. Now I am trying to do this on a larger scale.
I have an MBA from Suffolk University along with 25 years experience as a computer programmer and 3 years experience in financial services selling Life Insurance, Health Insurances, Mutual Funds, Socks, Bonds and all types of Annuities. I then decided I wanted to be my own boss and started a Vending Machine business.
To promote my business and make new contacts I joined a BNI (Business Networking International) group. At this time I was also taking real estate courses but was never really able to make an investment purchase. One of the other members (Peter Marchand) of the BNI had also done research into real estate. He has over 40 years experience in waterproofing, driveway repair and ventilation. Peter has worked on many rehabs.
We started talking and decided that it would be a good idea to use each strengths and work together. We created a detail business plan and started looking for investors. We would find an investor who said they were interested and every time we thought we had one then would look at the economy and change their minds.
The other parts of the business plan were taken care of. We have experienced and talented trade professional lined up to do the work. We have made real estate agents keeping us informed when they see a property we would like. We have banks that will give us lines of credit to do the rehab work. We have contacts in government agencies that have list of families that need apartments to live in. The only thing missing is the capital for the first purchase.
Then we heard about crowd funding as away to raise capital. The only part of the business plan that we have not taken care of is the funding to start the project. What is interesting about our business plan is that each finished project will fund the next project. The equity in the first multi-family house will be the down payment for the next multi-family house. One investment could end up helping up to 30 families in a year’s time.