Acorn Collective Details

Acorn Collective (OAK) was a project started in 2017 by Moritz Kurtz and Peter-Andreas Kurtz for business financing purposes which entailed collecting small sums of money from many people over the internet. Another name for the practice OAK incorporated into their project is crowdfunding, which has become very popular over the last 20 years. While aiming for transparency and tolerance, the founders clarified that other web-based financial services only assist projects that give the best return and often introduce policies that put obstacles in front of entrepreneurs from under-served developing countries willing to get funding.

The project used ERC-20 token, a blockchain asset, the history of which is transparent thanks to distributed ledger technology (DLT). The ERC-20 was similar to bitcoin but had smaller transaction fees because the transaction activity of the token holder, and not the venture capitalist, funded it. The Acorn Hub connected project funders and users directly.

Acorn Collective’s goal was to build an all-in-one business start-up platform accessible by everyone, no matter if they qualified for a bank loan or not. The creators designed Acorn Marketplace to provide real-time visibility and transparency while letting founders get a free and practical distribution channel to reach users who have shown an interest in crowdfunding. Acorn Marketplace also designed a Payment App for mobile users.

Real-World Example of Acorn Collective

Acorn Collective’s vision was to connect founders that come up with campaigns and provide consequential campaign support with backers that deposit money into these campaigns and receive rewards.

For example, the company pointed out that the smallest amount an individual can back is for $3.00 (or approximately 205 OAK) in return for which they would receive a thank-you email. For $10.00, the company would post the backer’s name and photo on the website. For $120.00, the individual would receive one year of access to a single-user plan of TopNotepad, a simple accounting software for small businesses that also provides users with payment and expense management.

Significance of Acorn Collective

In the initial representation of the project, the founders demonstrated a great deal of excitement rising from the upcoming experience of entering the growing market of crowdfunding and from the potential to provide the service to everyone, wherever they’re. At the time, Forbes acknowledged the accessibility of the platform as well.

Acorn’s founders reiterated many times on medium.com that they prided themselves in welcoming “designer crochet women’s wear from Jamaica and leather goods from South Africa,” as well as the innovative tech projects which traditionally applied for crowdfunding.

The $400,000 that Acorn Collective raised in July 2017 funded the project until 2018, when it launched pre-sale OAK tokens that were sold out and netted $4,000,000. In a later publication, the founders admitted that there was a lack of funding in the same year, which represented a substantial risk for anybody participating on the platform. In March 2019, they announced the closure of Acorn Collective because of the crash of the crypto market and the resulting failure of the main sale.