Definition
Crowdfunding (equity)
Raising capital from retail investors, regulated in the UK by the Financial Conduct Authority; Cornish Lithium used Crowdcube across multiple rounds.
From the episode “He Predicted the Lithium Boom in 2016. Everyone Called Him Crazy.”Hear it on the podcast1 episode
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Related terms in Startups & Fundraising
Capital formationThe process of raising and issuing new equity to fund a company. Fairmint automates and lowers the cost of this process.Chicken-and-Egg ProblemThe marketplace bootstrapping challenge where supply won't join without demand and demand won't come without supply. Typically solved by subsidizing one side — usually supply — early on.CommoditizationWhen a once-valuable capability becomes cheap and standard, collapsing its margin.Competitive MoatA defensible advantage such as IP, proprietary data, or network effects.Data flywheelEach use generates data that improves the product, which drives more use and more data.Defensibility ScoreA live metric used in Wildwood's pitch scoring sheet to evaluate how protected a startup's business model is from replication. Scores have declined industry-wide as AI lowers the cost of building software.Defensible IPProprietary data, SOPs, chemical formulas, machine configurations, and operational playbooks that cannot be replicated by a competitor running the same foundational AI model. The moat that makes a niche AI product acquisition-resistant and justifies enterprise pricing. Josh Furstoss's second checkbox before starting any new company.Defensive PublicationA deliberate strategy of publicly disclosing an invention without filing a patent, specifically to create prior art that prevents competitors from obtaining a patent on the same idea. The disclosing party waives any future patent rights but ensures no one else can obtain them either — the invention effectively enters the public domain immediately. Used when a company wants to operate freely in a technical space without the cost, time commitment, or disclosure-and-expiry constraints of a patent. Ophir describes this as one of SenseIP's emerging capabilities: helping companies identify which portions of their IP to publish defensively rather than patent.