Lottery offers participants a chance to win startup’s stocks

Regular readers of Springwise may remember MatchFounders, the site that paired startups with potential investors or buyers in a manner similar to many online dating sites. Rather than using a match-making format, we now see Denmark-based startuplotto.com hoping to boost entrepreneurs’ businesses and investors’ profiles using a lottery-inspired mechanic. Set up by 21stRetail, startuplotto.com is free to subscribe to, with subscribers receiving no more than one email per month. Contained within the email will be a short description of a new startup, with an invitation to sign up to its service or trial its product. If the subscriber accepts this invitation, they are then automatically entered into a lottery, handled by PricewaterhouseCoopers, to win 1 percent of the startup’s stock. Simultaneously, the entrepreneur sending the invitation through startuplotto.com will receive a host of new members and users. In startuplotto.com’s own words, “even if you don’t win the lotto you’ll still be helping entrepreneurs”. Entrepreneurs: one to use to expand your audience and boost your subscription figures? And everyone else: could this is be a way to get involved in the next big thing? (Related: Daily tips for startups, distilled from books old & new — Crowdsourced feedback offered to young startups — Platform lets investors clone experts’ stock ideas.)