FrontFundr is hitting new heights as Canadian companies continue to turn to investment crowdfunding to raise capital. We  have now taken part in raising a combined $10 million in capital for 18 Canadian businesses.

At just before ten in the evening of Saturday, August 31 in the year 1602, a notary knocked on a large wooden door and entered a candle-lit room. Inside sat the directors of the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, or the Dutch East India Company, which had been founded earlier that year. The bookkeeper of the Dutch East India Company, Barent Lampe, was seated behind an imposing volume with deckle-edged pages and a vellum cover: the Amsterdam Chamber’s subscription share register. It had been lying open all month. Saturday the 31st at midnight was the closing date for subscriptions, and there had scarcely been a quiet moment all day. Under the watchful eye of the notary, the bookkeeper checked each entry and added up the amounts.

Peter-Paul van Hoeken, Co-founder and CEO of Canada’s largest investment crowdfunding platform, FrontFundr, doesn’t think so.

My parents were really good at giving me advice about most things. Most things that is, except investing. I guess they were brought up being told that you don’t talk about money. We never had any serious conversations about investing, which never bothered me until recently. I had reached that point in life (finally) where I had a good job, paid off my student loan, and had some rainy day money in the bank. It all left me wondering, what’s my next step?